The rampant confusion over the putative secessionist movement calling for an independent state of Lanna in the north of Thailand is no more than you can expect in a country besotted with acronyms.

The website of the Lanna Assembly for the Defence of Democracy has been adamant that they have nothing to do with the idea of secession.  They are merely the northern branch of a network of academics who have been taken upon themselves the herculean task of reading the constitution, listening to the rantings of PDRC leader Suthep Thaugsuban, and pointing out where the one cannot coexist with the other.

Unfortunately, their Thai name, samacha pokpong prachathipatai, gets acronymized to So Po Po.  But So Po Po is also the acronym that comes before ‘Lao’, standing for satharanarat prachathipatai prachachon.  (At least this is what the domineering Thais will tell you; in truth and in Lao, it is sathalanalat pasathipatai pasason.)  (And stop sniggering, you oh-so-superior Thais.)

But whatever.  So Po Po Lao means ‘Lao PDR’ which, the encyclopaedia tells you, stands incongruously for ‘People’s Democratic Republic’.  Except those who have actually been there say it really means ‘Please Don’t Rush’.

So when a random reporter asked a random woman on a motorbike in Chiang Mai what the So Po Po Lanna on her headband meant, the answer was along the lines of the misleading name of our ‘little brother’ neighbours rather than the earnest academics. 

Enter full of wrath and indignation the Thai military, an organization especially sensitive to territorial integrity.  After all, the Thai armed forces owe their existence to this concept.  Not that they were expected to protect the motherland from foreign enemies – at the time these were colonial powers against whom they stood no chance.  The real need was to give territorial reality to the newly imagined Siamese state and to create national institutions to bolster this idea.

Square-bashing then as now was as much ideological as military.  The idea was to instil in the heads of northeastern conscripts that they were not Lao, as they thought, but Siamese.  The fact that they could also be used for suppressing internal dissent (often from people who were not too keen on becoming Siamese as in today’s Deep South) was all to the good.

The army has taken the line that even when it is deliberately misread, So Po Po Lanna is far too dangerous an idea to let pass.  Time for maximum bluster and bullying.

But the misunderstanding of acronyms seems to have been catching.  Take, for example, the sharply-worded message from the PDRC to the Financial Institutions Development Fund of the Bank of Thailand.  This complains of violently biased coverage and demands the withdrawal of their southeast Asian correspondent. 

Now the FIDF normally shrinks any publicity of any kind and was at a loss to understand this.  Until one bright spark remembered the Bangkok Bank for Commerce, a highly corrupt enterprise whose dodgy loans to themselves, select politicians and even BoT officials led to its demise over 15 years ago, when its business was taken over by the FIDF.  It seems that the PDRC had confused one BBC with another.

The FIDF, relieved for once not to be guilty as charged, quickly sent a reply exonerating themselves.  To the Primary Dispute Resolution Centre of the Singaporean courts.  They realized their error when their envelope came back with a very snitty comment written on it.  So they re-addressed it to the Physical Disabilities Resource Centre of a local hospital. 

Not to be outdone, the UDD, noting the 3 years and counting that the National Anti-Corruption Commission has taken over rice-buying malfeasance charges against former PM Abhisit compared to lightning speed with which they have dealt with Yingluck’s case, shot off a regular ‘double standards’ complaint to the National Association of Catholic Chaplains.  (Didn’t it worry them when the Post Office told them it would cost foreign postage?)

We at Prachatai are of course immune from such solecisms.  This is why we have studiously ignored a letter threatening to close us down if we don’t kill off this Alien Thoughts column from some outfit calling themselves the CMPO.  I mean, why should we listen to China Motor Parts Online?