William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of “Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades”.

As the globe sees flickers of light at the end of the pandemic era tunnel, the sight of Bangkok looks rather grim.

Much of the Asia-Pacific region is gearing up for a cycle of reopening and recovery in 2022. Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy is on track to 2023. This timeline does not come from foreign opponents, but from Governor of the Bank of Thailand, Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput, who sees more data than the rest of us.

Yet Thailand’s strategy to, in Sethaput’s words, “get back to pre-COVID-19 levels” faces a triple whammy that is sure to cause longer-term damage regardless of the product readings. gross domestic by 2023: a devastated tourism sector, a driver of consumption and household debt overhang.

Bad things come in threes, as they say. And Thailand is suffering from the wave of COVID # 3 infection, creating new headwinds that the BOT seems ill-equipped to tackle.

As sober as Sethaput’s assessment may seem, the indications from his staff are even worse. Case in point: BOT senior manager Don Nakornthab arguing that the country may be considering a bumpy K-shaped recovery. The reason: Even if exports pick up, tourism might not be anytime soon.

K-shaped recoveries are essentially two-way ways out of crisis, where the upper middle class and the wealthy see their fortunes rise and most of society see them plummet. As China is producing a sort of V-shaped recovery, many developed economies, including the United States, are sure to emerge even less income-equitable than in 2019.

Thailand’s problems run deeper, however, given the place was in semi-crisis mode before COVID. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the military government that took power in 2014 invented it as it went along. This left Thailand on a particularly fragile footing as the pandemic hit Asia.

In many ways, it was business as usual for the past 15 years. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, Bangkok saw a truly bewildering number of new governments seize power, promise change and fail miserably.

Most notable of these was Thaksin Shinawatra, who seized power in 2001, pledging to reinvent the system and root out corruption to spread the benefits of growth. Instead, he remade the economy to serve his family businesses, like Silvio Berlusconi.

In 2006, the military had had enough and seized power. After that, Bangkok’s political revolving door spat out a number of governments, including one led by Thaksin’s little sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. All the while, billionaire Thaksin has rallied his exile voters, like Donald Trump from Southeast Asia.

In 2014, a new group of generals effectively said “hold my Singha” and seized the post of prime minister. Their leader, Prayuth Chan-ocha, remains in the driver’s seat as Thailand’s most serious COVID-19 outbreak once again shakes the political scene.

Prayuth started out by projecting a bold character to do big things. Yet since swapping the uniform for a business suit, he’s been running a headlight deer operation.

For a man who claimed to despise Thaksinomics, Prayuth proved adept at emulating his fundamentals. He, too, is throwing cash donations to rural Thais to create a bulwark against urban elites. Generally speaking, city dwellers know that Prayuth has done next to nothing to increase Thai competitiveness or innovation.

Prayuth failed to fix the countless leaks from Thailand when the economic sun shone from 2014 to early 2020. He failed to do the hard work of eliminating bureaucracy, investing in education and l ‘productivity increase or keep pace with reform efforts in Indonesia, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also didn’t address a Chinese threat that was evident in Thaksin’s time.

Rather than putting the local workforce in shape, Prayuth did what every Thai leader has done since the mid-1990s: focus everything on attracting more foreign tourists, selling more products to abroad and attract more foreign capital to support household consumption. But Prayuth forgot to keep Thailand’s left flank: a pandemic threatening all three economic forces.

The household debt problem means Prayuth’s economic troops – Thailand’s 70 million people – are tired and weighed down as a new battle begins. Thai consumers are among the hardest hit in Asia, with an average household debt-to-GDP ratio of 89.3%, the highest since the BOT started measuring it in 2003. This is an increase from 78 , 1% in 2017.

This means households are really struggling as the new COVID wave hits incomes and confidence. It also means that any new stimulus that Bangkok throws into the mix is ​​purely defensive. Lawmakers of the nearly $ 100 billion budget just passed could limit the fallout, but do nothing to put Thailand on a more promising path from 2023 and beyond.

Now the pandemic is diverting Thailand even further. The destination is upper middle income status – per capita income well over $ 10,000. Thailand entered the pandemic below the $ 8,000 threshold. By 2023, who knows? Considering that consumption accounts for half of Thailand’s $ 502 billion GDP, the country is on the verge of pulling back.

Thailand’s political dysfunction over the past 15 to 20 years was already making way for a lost decade before the pandemic. Today, one of Asia’s most promising economies could face something worse because its leaders are stuck on time.

We can debate whether Bangkok is trapped in 1997, 2006 or 2014. However, it is painfully clear that Thailand will not be in a good position once the COVID era has passed.