A year or more ago, when the Asok-Sukhumwit junction was occupied by a PDRC reform-before-election mob, the site sported a banner supplied by the nearby campus of Srinakharinwirot University.  They had obviously been told to put their superior education to use by explaining in English something of what the protests were about.

Their sign said ‘Stop Corruptions!’

One was tempted to scrawl underneath ‘And Start Learning Englishes!’

I don’t suppose any of us would actually stand up and declare support for corruption.  Well, apart from the two-thirds of the population who repeatedly tell the ABAC pollsters that they are quite happy with corruption as long as they get their share. 

But personally I cannot support corruption (I never seem to get my share) and so must stand behind Prime Minister, Head of the NCPO and chief coup-maker Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha in his anti-corruption drive. 

Forswearing the negative comments that the PM has warned us against (coincidentally just as the highly contentious draft constitution is revealed to the people who will have to live under it), I would like to take this opportunity to contribute to the good work of the government in suppressing many and varied corruptions in a decidedly positive way. 

Now that they’ve dealt with the corruption in the sale of lottery tickets (or soon will do), and the corruption of the Phuket airport taxi mafia (or soon will do) and the illegal beach restaurants in Hua Hin (by moving them to become illegal restaurants on another beach), let me point them to an area of corruption that should be just as easy to clear up.

This concerns the ghost soldiers of the Thai military, whose salaries the tax payer funds and whose services are supposed the safeguard the nation from enemies foreign and domestic (overwhelmingly the latter), but whose existence is a clear case of, gasp, corruption.

After 6 months square-bashing, conscripts are assigned to a job.  A surprisingly large number end up as servants in officer’s quarters, doing the garden, washing the laundry, giving the cocker spaniel a bath. 

In fact, each officer’s house will have so many servants assigned to it that they would quickly run out of flower beds to weed, clothes to wash and iron, and cocker spaniels to bath.  They would, that is, if all the assigned conscripts were actually there.

But if the government’s spiffily uniformed corruption fighters were to look closely at officer’s billets, they might well find all the housework being done by a skivvy from Burma and not a soldier in sight.

These ghost soldiers have quietly disappeared into the black economy, leaving behind them no trace other than their bank books and ATM cards, which their superior officers graciously look after for them.  Their salaries are deposited every month but the balances never accumulate.  And no housework gets done and no nation is defended.

Now the average soldier earns only a few thou a month.  But there are hundreds upon hundreds involved in this scam (involuntarily, you understand – soldiers must obey orders).  It must add up to a tidy sum. 

Testimony of this has been provided many times, most recently in the Bangkok Post last week.  It should not be hard to find convincing evidence, bring prosecutions and put a sizable segment of the nation’s armed forces behind bars.

And then there’s procurement.  Various percentages have been named by the private sector as the add-on price of doing business with the government (not that you’ll find a captain of industry admitting that he’s actually paid this ‘supplement’).  I can think of no reason for thinking that military procurement would be any different.

Except in one respect.  Government agency corruption sees unnecessarily large amounts of money spent on stuff they were going to buy anyway.  The military spends unnecessary money on unnecessary stuff.  Thailand bought an aircraft carrier with no aircraft, built a submarine base when it has no submarines, and keeps trying to fly a blimp that won’t inflate and whose purpose remains as obscure as the purchase contract.

But perhaps the cause celebre is the GT200 ‘bomb detector’.  Despite the fact that the guy that peddled it is currently serving 7 years in the UK for fraud, despite the fact that the Thai government’s own tests showed it was useless, and despite the fact that in at least 3 cases the GT200 gave the all-clear and people were then killed when the undetected bombs went off, there are military officers and others who continue to swear by it.

But what is beyond doubt is that even if they think an empty plastic box, an old-fashioned telescopic car aerial and some laminated cards can actually detect bombs, drugs and illegal migrants, was there any need to spend as near as dammit a million baht on each piece of junk?

I’m confident that the stalwart anti-corruption crusaders at the top of the government can find an answer to that question.