BANGKOK – The government has announced a massive new spending program to build a convincing appearance of doing something about flood management, deputy premier Kittiratt Na-Ranong announced yesterday.
Budgeted at ฿350 billion, the project represents Thailand’s largest-ever public-perception construction effort, involving multiple ministries and taking up to fifteen years. However, Kittirat insists that the spending is worth it.
“The flood crisis of last year was the biggest crisis in government confidence since the 1997 economic collapse, and it requires an equivalent response in PR and perception-changing. To overcome the current deficit in public approval, Thailand must build its image like never before.”
“It’s an investment in our political future, and the future of our own children who will become politicians,” he added.
The proposed budget includes the hiring of multiple PR firms and advertising agencies to create a national campaign to win back public trust, along with the hiring of foreign experts to give seminars on flood prevention that give the impression of government expertise. Over a dozen committees will be created with high-ranking VIPs as its members to provide press conferences, photo ops, and positive headlines through 2015.
Additionally, money will be earmarked for the payoff of large developers who will then allow the government to destroy a tiny handful of the hundreds of illegal housing developments that are currently blocking the city irrigation system, thus providing material for news cameras to disseminate to the public and assure them that the government is serious and not corrupt.
Money will also be spent on public activities that give people a cursory, deceptive sense of participation in flood prevention, such as flood-awareness festivals and fundraising events, as well as school projects that ask students to create their own flood-prevention campaigns that can be briefly promoted and then ignored.
Approximately one million trees will be planted to offer a hopeful vision of prevention of soil erosion. No money will be spent, however, on maintaining the trees after the planting ceremony.
About ฿20 billion will be spent on materials and programs reminding Thais about His Majesty the King’s numerous water-management initiatives, without going into any details about how those initiatives were choked in scope and effectiveness by developers, business interests, and the apathy of elected governments over the last 35 years.
“With this multi-pronged approach to tackling the flood-prevention-appearance problem head on, we believe we can change the voters’ minds in a positive and permanent way,” Kittirat said. “It’s a lot of money to spend, but we really have no other choice.”
The opposition Democrat Party expressed measured support for the project, pending confirmation that it included sufficient spending on reconstructing and improving the BMA’s image.
A spokesman for the Army, however, expressed concern about the project’s high price tag, saying that it might end up taking money away from the military’s ongoing projects to pretend to care about national security.
