The good times are over.
Last Wednesday's press conference with the Wild Boar Team should have been a fitting curtain call. The world finally got to meet those kids for whom we collectively held our breath, and we weren't disappointed.
For a little over an hour they related their experiences, apologised, expressed remorse, and paid homage to Saman Gunan who lost his life trying to rescue them. Dressed in football gear, the 13 boys looked fit and healthy and spoke with twinges of innocence and humour.
It was a reminder of the feel-good aura that accompanied the entire news story, when humanity dropped its tools and rushed to that cave in Chiang Rai to help get them out.
At that press conference the boys were accompanied by Navy Seals in dark glasses and caps, and Lt Col Park Loharachun, who stayed with the boys in the cave and clearly had a good rapport with the kids.
Missing on the stage was the Chiang Rai governor, Narongsak Osotthanakorn, who on the same day of the press conference began duties in his new downgraded post of Phayao governor. In his place, in his stiff civil service uniform, was the brand new Chiang Rai governor, sitting like a proud father next to the boys, basking in the Wild Boar limelight, contributing nothing but a reminder of the hoary old cogs of the Thai civil service, which we will address in exactly five paragraphs' time.
If only the press conference last Wednesday were the end. Now that the boys have been rescued, hospitalised, treated and paraded before the media in brand new football outfits, the next step is the most important and long-lasting of all -- normalcy.
These kids need to get back to football practise, school, homework and family life. Their brief glimpse of fame should, at their age, be just that. The media should leave them alone, but here in Thailand, like most of the world, the media is not going to go down without a fight. They are circling them like hawks right now.
It also means the good times are over. For a brief few weeks there, humanity was a uniting force that forgot about our foibles and shortcomings. We showed our very best side. It was a glorious time to be alive and to be human, albeit excruciatingly nerve-wracking.
Now that the story is over, however, our foibles and shortcomings are seeping back again.
The news that three of the wild boars, including Coach Ake and the star kid, Adul, are stateless highlighted the plight of so many stateless people in this country, unable to gain citizenship owing to archaic and cruel laws and the denizens in office who bask in their impossible intricacy. For any stateless person, poor and under-educated, the required proof and documents to become a Thai citizen fall far beyond their reach.
Ake and Adul charmed us all at last Wednesday's press conference. What a perfect opportunity it would have been to have announced the instant approval of Thai citizenship. Let's face it; Thailand's image in the world received a healthy boost from this incident. Their being granted citizenship would have been an extra feather in the country's cap.
It took one civil servant, high up, and one politician, also high up, to douse all that. There would be no special dispensation for the three Wild Boar boys.
This announcement came from Arthit Boonyasophat, who ushered in the end of the touchy-feely time, and brought us back crashing down to earth.
Arthit is director-general of the Department of Provincial Administration. His announcement was akin to a violent electrical storm breaking over your open-air beach wedding at a five-star Phuket resort, where you skimped on the umbrellas to save on the budget.
There would be no privileges. Arthit would act strictly according to the Nationality Act. Someone needs to find this man and quietly whisper "Section 44" into his ear. He went on to explain that it wasn't his responsibility anyway -- that belonged to the Interior Minister -- but he had to "supervise the issue".
Can't you feel it, dear reader? The shackles of red tape slowly closing around those three boys? If rising cave waters couldn't squeeze the life out of them, just watch government red tape finish off the job.
We then had Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan reiterate that their cases would adhere strictly according to the law. Again, where is Section 44 when you need it?
There is a precedent for these three boys, unfortunately. Remember Nong Mong, the paper plane hero of Thailand? He featured in this column last September. Here was a boy who charmed the country with his paper plane prowess.
Mong was big news in September, 2009, when as a 12-year-old northern boy he won the national paper airplane flying competition. He was born in Chiang Mai, but his parents were itinerant Burmese.
The irony was Mong, having won the national competition, was expected to go on to represent Thailand in the international championships in Japan. Being stateless, he couldn't get a passport. Mong's application to travel outside the country had to be processed by those hoary old grinding cogs of Thai bureaucracy for which Arthit and Prawit are responsible for giving grease and oil changes. The Interior Ministry said no.
Mong burst into tears on live television. In a rare show of sensibility the government stepped in and did the right thing. They didn't do what Arthit espoused this week – they didn't follow the strict letter of the law, because this is Thailand and thankfully, every law can be adjusted for the situation. It issued papers for Mong to travel.
Mong jetted off to Japan where he won bronze in the world championships. Upon his return he was greeted by every politician and civil servant of the day. Mong returned to Chiang Mai to continue his education.
It is now 2018, and Mong is 21 years old -- and still stateless. If he couldn't get an ID card, what chance do the Wild Boars have?
So we have moved from man's humanity towards his fellow man to back to our regular state; that of man's indifference to fellow man, especially those whose parents were born outside the country.
I'm not just talking about Thai bureaucracy either – what possessed Elon Musk to destroy his international reputation with that "pedo" comment? His allegation of paedophilia against a key member of the rescue was not just a slur on a local hero. It was a slur on Thailand.
Musk's inference -- that any Western man living in Thailand was only there to play with little boys -- is a slur on Thailand more than Western men. This is a situation that Thailand famously bristles at every time this dubious reputation arises.
And yet the government was quite happy to let that one pass by without a whisper. Musk's little spat was wrong on all sorts of levels, and may we be reminded of it in the not too distant future, when electric cars replace gasoline ones, for my money will be going straight to Tesla's immediate competitor.
So the feel-good era of those few weeks is over. May we reminisce about the time fondly, when for a moment we were decent human beings working and praying as one.
It's over now. We are back to reality, which means school for the kids, bureaucracy for all, statehood for none, and immoral juvenile stabs by the likes of Elon Musk. I'm willing to tolerate it all -- just leave those kids alone and let them get on with growing up.
