Recently I was at a government office to collect a cheque. As is usual in such circumstances, prior to receiving the cheque I was required to sit and wait in deferential silence as a friendly government official glanced over the burgeoning documents necessary to receive a cheque from the government; I must have felled an entire rai of Khao Yai for those photocopies.
As I waited with my oft-worn sycophantic smile, I noticed a civil servant just to my left.
He sat silently at his wooden desk, his arms relaxed out in front of him, his hands slowly rotating a 10 baht coin. I turned to acknowledge him and he smiled warmly and nodded his head.
PHOTOS: TAWATCHAI KHEMGUMNERD AND THINKSTOCK
There was nothing extraordinary about his dress, face or manner. Passing him in the street, you would have continued your train of thought as to what you would have for dinner, or what you could have been had you not married that good for nothing, or whatever else you may think about as you stride down a causeway.
More intriguing was his desk.
There was absolutely nothing on it.
Not a pen. Not a document. Not a framed picture of his homely wife and plain-Jane daughter.
In the middle of that visit I was required to go and get another signed photocopy of my passport, as if eight signed copies were somehow not enough, and that required me to travel down two flights of stairs then back up again.
He was still in that position when I returned, when I signed for the cheque, and when I left.
It is perhaps more a testament to my obsessive compulsive nature, as opposed to that man's inanity, that I deliberately sought him out each time I had to pick up a cheque or sign a document on subsequent visits.
Invariably he wasn't doing much. Sometimes he held a pencil, and on one trip he was fondling a sheath of official-looking documents.
One time he wasn't there. I hoped something terrible hadn't happened to him, like being run over by a bus or coming down with the flu or, worse, being given something to do.
But next visit he was back, a friendly government officer watching the tick, tick, tick of the clock as time marched happily past him on its journey to retirement day.
There are times in my frenetic life that I catch myself out wishing I was him.
I fantasise about being able to sit at a desk and do the absolute minimum in order to draw a salary that would maintain a lifestyle acceptable to my wife and nondescript offspring.
Certainly, it would lessen the risk of my getting into trouble. Imagine if I accidentally wrote the wrong thing on a document, or forgot to sign one page, or allowed some casual mistake to pass through.
I haven't seen this gentleman for a while now but he is in my thoughts this week. Maybe it's because his government is acting the exact opposite to him.
It is stamping its feet and cursing and damning TV journalists and laboratories and anybody else. It is threatening to launch an avalanche of lawsuits. It is going to the very extremities of its power and energy to stamp out the scourge that is threatening its existence.
Not the scourge of corruption. The scourge of being accused of corruption.
It may have been another uneventful week for that government officer, but it certainly hasn't been for the government. Not even a monk who owns 35 vehicles and fathered a child with a 14-year-old girl could supersede the tainted rice controversy.
Remember back when this government first came to power? The prime minister and her cabinet lined up for a photo where they crossed their arms in front of their chests and made a very serious collective face.
NO CORRUPTION was the accompanying slogan - in English. Why in English? Could it be it was just too ludicrous to be translated into the mother tongue?
That was a cheap shot, Andrew. It was a positive sign; finally a government ready to get tough on the very thing that prevents Thailand from sailing ahead of its neighbours economically, socially, even spiritually.
It was a difficult task, and the government was not unlike David with his slingshot - but look how that ended up.
More recently there was a STOP CORRUPTION version of this campaign. Gone were the severe crossed arms; this time everybody was smiling.
It turns out the sign makers got it wrong. Yes let's blame the sign makers, since shooting the messenger appears to be de rigeur. Both campaign slogans lacked the integral word that should have been tacked on at the end.
ALLEGATIONS.
STOP CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS.
Supa Piyajitti was the first and most prominent to fall.
She used to be the deputy permanent secretary for the Finance Ministry and oversaw the books on Thailand's biggest embarrassment since siding with Japan in 1942 and declaring war on the United States - the rice-pledging scheme.
She went in front of a parliamentary committee examining the scheme and acknowledged the big white elephant in the room; that on every level, there was rampant corruption. It was something she told the prime minister as far back as October of last year.
She paved the way for David to pick up his slingshot. In a perfect world Ms Supa would be granted sainthood. The woman should at least be made a khunying.
We should be making a bronze statute of Ms Supa and erecting it somewhere down Ratchadamnoen Avenue, perhaps not far from the boxing stadium, which would be fitting since what she experienced next from the government was akin to a TKO.
Corruption? What corruption? Prove it, Supa. Prove it!
She's since been transferred to an inactive post and has the weight of the entire Thailand civil service crushing down on her as we speak. She may as well pack her box and go home right now. She is as vilified and chastised as that monk with the kid and the cars.
Ms Supa might have gone away but the scandal hasn't.
It is becoming increasingly clear that rotting Thai rice is not restricted to the silos of the failed, corruption-plagued rice scheme. It also extends to bags of the exported stuff.
Last Tuesday, a consumer group came out with results from five laboratories that revealed there are dangerous levels of methyl bromide in exported rice.
What - is that group stupid? Didn't they learn anything from what happened to hapless Ms Supa?
The government reacted swiftly.
Which laboratories? How dare they! What are their names? Who are on their boards of directors?
The government maintains there are only five laboratories "accredited" to run such chemical tests - and they all belong to the government, and they certainly didn't discover any such levels.
Goodness, how could that be? How could the results of private labs differ from those of the government's? Could it be my statuesque friend has relatives in the labs?
The casualties continue to mount. There is an investigative journalist who claimed last week he found tainted rice in our exports. I believe he is still hanging somewhere from a willow tree outside the television studios, his legs twitching in the breeze.
NO CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS.
My little stationary friend is the poster boy for this campaign.
In all the time I have known him, he hasn't engaged in any corruption whatsoever. Nor has he alleged any exists.
He should be rewarded. He should get a medal to pin on his chest, so that anybody who spots him will know that here is a man who neither engages in corruption nor alleges that anybody else is committing it.
Such is a work ethic that allows peace and stability to thrive, among other things. Rest easy, Goliath.