In a statement a week ago, the Board said that May 2009 arrivals were 13 percent below the number for a year earlier, in May 2008. Compared month on month, May 2009 arrivals were 7 percent below April 2009.[2] 

The global economic recession and the spreading Mexican H1N1 flu have dealt tourism a body blow.

If you think Singapore's tourism is in the dumps, Thailand's is worse. Here is a chart showing international arrivals at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport. The May 2009 numbers are 26 percent lower than those for May 2008 (compared to Singapore's 13 percent drop). Their Chinese tourist numbers fell 55 percent. Thailand's tourism industry is crying out in pain. [3]

Thailand's problems are worse than Singapore's because there's the added factor of political instability. Starting with the coup in 2006, then dramatic news of yellow-shirted protestors occupying the airport last November, followed by red-shirted protestors staging huge demonstrations that led to fighting in the streets of Bangkok and Pattaya in April this year, not a few potential visitors would have cancelled or postponed plans to visit.

* * * * *

 
Thailand continues to shoot itself in its foot. Now, there's a report about an extortion racket at Suvarnabhumi Airport itself, which should make even more tourists think that the country is fast becoming a completely lawless place. [4]

Since Thailand is a favourite destination for many Singaporeans, I thought I should mention it here. In addition, I think there's a political morality tale we can draw from it.

The Times (UK) reported, 28 June 2009, that Stephen Ingram and his wife Xi Lin, both technology professionals from Cambridge, England, were caught in the scam recently. A Danish couple was also reportedly victimised just before that. Surfing the blogs, I easily found yet another story about an Irish woman who found herself ensnared over a tube of lipstick.

What generally happens is this. When an outbound traveller buys anything from a shop in the airport -- and it could well be a small-value purchase, not necessarily an expensive one -- one of three things can happen:

(a) the cashier either drops an extra item into your shopping bag without you noticing;

(b) the cashier gives you that extra item saying it's a free gift; or

(c) if you're buying more than one item, the cashier charges you for one less than you're buying.

A few metres out of the shop, a security guard stops you, saying you have been fingered as a shoplifter. Your shopping bag is searched and sure enough, you have one unpaid item in it.

You are taken to a police station and miss your flight. Your passport is taken away from you, and you are thrown into a lock-up. At this point, you're totally desperate. Out of the blue, a fixer appears. He tells you that he knows how to handle the police. For a fee. The first step is to post bail, because you really don't want to stay in a police lock-up for days on end. He comes back and tells you he has negotiated bail for such and such an amount. You arrange for a wire transfer of money from your friends and family in your home country to post bail and pay his fee.

But you still can't leave the country, nor check in to any hotel without your passport. The fixer then arranges for you to stay in a no-questions-asked love motel, which charges you an above-market price.

Finally, your passport re-appears, and you are told the police have found no evidence and have dropped charges. Yet, your bail money is not returned to you, though at least you are free to fly home. By then, you're easily S$20,000 poorer.

Ingram's and Xi Lin's fixer reportedly told them that 160 persons had been caught for shoplifting at the airport recently – or did he mean caught up in the extortion racket? He himself no longer accepted laptops in lieu of payment of his fee; he already had too many.

As you can imagine, this is an elaborate scam, and clearly involves a number of different people, including the police. Moreover, although recent reports have mentioned the airport as the setting, it is possible for the same scam to be repeated in any other shopping area of Bangkok. All it takes is connivance between a shop (or its employees) and the district police, plus a few others eager to help themselves to your wealth, e.g. fixers and nearby love motels.

* * * * *

The rise of rackets like these is a reflection of two things: economic hardship, which usually makes crime attractive, and weak government, which means the perpetrators do not fear the law. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's coalition government is drifting, policy-wise. There is no focus, nor any demonstrable executive competency. The military and now large sections of the police ignore the ministers. The government is also constantly distracted by political problems. It has just lost two by-elections in a row, and going by these results, the pro-Thaksin Puea Thai party is set to win big in the next general election, though whether that would resolve anything in the country's protracted power struggle should not be assumed.

When a government has a doomed air about it, and the prospect of a succeeding government being any more effective remote, bureaucrats and police officers start to think only of their own interests, of which lining their own pockets must surely lie at the top of the list.

This is a nasty mix: economic stress, paralysed government, constitutional gridlock.

* * * * *

 
Is it time for Singaporeans to gloat now?

Don't. Thailand's present may well be our future. Economic stress is a periodic fact of life; it comes in cycles. Paralysed government and constitutional gridlock I can quite easily see in our own crystal ball.

We have tinkered with our electoral, parliamentary and justice systems so much that in a crunch, we may find no clear way forward to resolve any dispute because every institution of state has had its credibility compromised. If the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) chooses not to heed a particular election result, we too may end up with a paralysing stand-off.

Like the Thai coup generals, they could try to retain power by going on a disqualification spree of opposing candidates.

Here's another example: Iran and its recent presidential election in which Mir-Hossein Mousavi's supporters hotly dispute the very suspicious looking result in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Our justice system cannot be relied on to take to task any government that chooses to bulldoze its way to retain power. Our police force cannot be relied on to stay neutral. 

Or clean. Every now and then, we hear of police officers on the take. The only thing keeping them in line is unrelenting vigilance by political leaders. But if these leaders are more concerned with their own survival, you do really think our police are not capable of similar rackets as in Bangkok?

The solution, as the PAP government reminds us every so often, is always to have good clean leaders voted into power, and by that, they mean themselves.

No, for that is an unreliable solution. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guards? What if they are not clean? What if the cleaner people are in the opposition parties? Where are the mechanisms to ensure that when we vote out the PAP, they will really get out?