It takes something special to make people miss Loong Tu, said a YouTube comment posted by someone who obviously is not Prayut Chan-o-cha’s biggest fan. That “something special” might be something called “Digital Wallet”.
The comparison between the Half-Half programme and the Digital Wallet agenda has often been made ever since the Pheu Thai Party unveiled the latter.
But debates on the pros and cons of both economic rescue plans are intensifying thanks partly to the start of Digital Wallet registration, and partly to the song “We miss Loong Tu”.
The song became a hit at a peculiar moment, coinciding with Thailand’s entry into yet another period of high political drama.
The Constitutional Court is set to rule on the futures of the main opposition party, Move Forward, and Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. Pheu Thai’s de facto patriarch, Thaksin Shinawatra, is also approaching the virtual end of restrictions on his political activities.
Most analysts think Move Forward’s legal existence is hanging by a thread, meaning they believe a dissolution verdict is highly possible. But they are divided on what happens next.
Many believe the already-high popularity of Move Forward will increase and propel its reincarnation (in case the party is dissolved) to a landslide election victory.
Fewer others expect tough punishment that could make it impossible for key members to carry on in parliamentary politics.
The worst-case scenario has heavy punishment throw the entire apparatus into disarray, with enough time left for opponents to discredit those who remain or for those who remain to make bad mistakes, or shoot themselves in the foot to be exact.
As for Srettha, just a few believe he will be held responsible for a bad Cabinet appointment and hence lose his government job.
If the unthinkable “Guilty” verdict happens, the timing of “We miss Loong Tu” will become more curious.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra may be too young and too inexperienced, and Palang Pracharath leader Prawit Wongsuwan is having trouble governing his own political camp, let alone the country.
This is where “We miss Loong Tu” could be more symbolic than it appears now.
Thailand will unlikely return to Prayut Chan-o-cha.
“We miss Loong Tu” can be just a soul-searching statement symbolically underlining national ambivalence that has seen the country go back and forth between “democracy” and “dictatorship” with “half-baked democracy” or soft autocracy in between.
Such ambivalence led to the absurdity unravelling in Parliament a few days ago, when former critics and former proponents alike voted blatantly against their previous stands to pass a special budget designed to fund Digital Wallet.
This week’s vote saw Pheu Thai’s reluctant allies, who slammed the Digital Wallet idea in the past, helping propel the proposed legislative funding of the programme over the finish line, and Move Forward, who kept silent when the idea was mooted when Pheu Thai was its powerful partner, fighting tooth and nail against the agenda.
This week, Move Forward avoided praising Half-Half too much for obvious reasons, but even Prayut’s most ardent political enemies have always struggled to criticise the Covid 19-era programme.
It’s natural for everyone to compare the two economic rescue/stimulant agendas, and here are some of the most-mentioned points:
1) Half-Half used a significantly-smaller state budget in spite of Covid-19 being at its economically-devastating peak, rattling big businesses, sending little ones to the edge of bankruptcy and crippling average customers’ spending power.
2) Although the Prayut government could spend at will using post-coup powers, Half-Half was seen as necessary and was largely perceived as being implemented with more monetary discipline in mind than Digital Wallet.
And while the Prayut administration had summary powers, nobody would have been able to stop criticism against Half-Half had it been a truly-bad idea. Ask any neutral economist today to choose between Half-Half and Digital Wallet based on legal, constitutional as well as financial disciplinary reasons, the answer will be a no-brainer.
3) For economic and political reasons, Half-Half’s main superiority was the virtually borderless spending conditions.
People could go out of their registered neighbourhoods and eat or shop at places with Half-Half signs which were all aplenty.
This really helped small-time business owners. Equally or even more important was that Half-Half enabled consumers to eat or get things that they really wanted but would not have spent hard-earned money on otherwise.
Digital Wallet, critics charge, can make many rush to get items they don’t crucially need.
Critics suspect that Digital Wallet would not help small business operators as much.
Additionally, Half-Half seemed to have greater safeguards against potential exploitation by big corporations. Digital Wallet’s zonal spending rules can also lead to all sorts of problems.
As for consumers, the jury is still out on Digital Wallet. A taxi driver whose officially-documented neighbourhood is some 200 kilometres away, told Thai PBS World that he would think really hard if he has to drive home to spend digital money.
A shopper-for-hire could become a new job if one can figure out a way to benefit from using others’ digital money to buy desired items.
This means that some recipients of Bt10,000 might not get the full value of the “money” because part of it has to be paid to the ones promising to shop under tough conditions for them.
A food vendor in Lard Prao District is not sure if his business will benefit from the fact that people in his area will get additional “money”.
First, it remains uncertain if his shop will be qualified to be part of the Digital Wallet programme. Second, his area is full of workers who come from other places.
(Not quite relevant in the comparison is the recognition that Half-Half achieved a highly-difficult task of easing ordinary people into the cashless culture that requires basic knowledge and skills to perform wireless transactions.
Without Half-Half, a large number of Thai vendors would still not have had the QR codes.)
Even people who did not like Prayut that much have told Thai PBS World that they miss Half-Half. These people have one wish in common.
They would like politicians they elect to come up with such a programme so they can be fully proud of their preferred political system.
By Tulsathit Taptim
