Government for royalty

Thailand’s day-to-day government, already in pretty poor shape, has decelerated further as all of government concentrates on royalism.

We read a couple of days ago of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul cutting short his ASEAN summit participation to skedaddle back to Bangkok to ensure that arrangements for a whole year of monochrome Thailand were put in place.

Those arrangements consume huge amounts of the time of ministers and tens of thousands of officials. As the Bangkok Post reports, taxpayers are being fleeced again as it requires “[e]ight committees … to coordinate preparations for the royal funeral of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit The Queen Mother.”

The Prime Minister’s Office is consumed by the arrangements, with royalist Prime Minister Anutin determined that “every aspect of the royal ceremony be carried out with the highest honour.”

But those eight committees do not include “a central coordination centre … set up to oversee collaboration between state agencies, the private sector and the general public throughout the ceremony” and all of the provincial arrangements that also require dozens of committees and millions on taxpayer funds.

Then there are cremation preparations: “with the new crematorium expected to take around 11 months to be completed…”. There are hundreds of officials assigned to this task.

And more taxpayer funds are required as “Prime Minister Anutin … had instructed all relevant agencies to provide citizens attending the royal funeral with transport, food, drinks, and accommodation.”

Meanwhile, the average person is expected to also adopt the monochrome of official Thailand, with “all events should be conducted with dignity and respect.” In practice this means officials and even the private sector competing to outdo each other on dreariness. That loyalty competition has already led to confusion.

But it also leads to North Korean-style bizarreness. For example, in Chiang Mai, organizers of the Lantern Festival decided that colorful, floral-themed artworks would not be permited, so painted them black “as a show of mourning for the late Queen Mother.” After criticism, they removed them entirely. Expect more of this crass royalist stupidity.

The serious question is how much this costs the taxpayer and how much damage it does to the economy and to the lives of regular people.