At the start of the most recent shadow cabinet meeting (held every Thursday morning) the shadow PM, Abhisit Vejjajiva, addressed the first item on the agenda and asked a simple question: If we were the government, what would we do?

The agenda item was the issue of rising prices for rice. The question, as simple and obvious as it was, caused a momentary silence. Those of you who know the Democrat party know that maintaining silence is not our usual style.

Nevertheless, the beauty of the ``shadow'' concept is that the Opposition is forced to think of solutions, not just criticism _ and we all know that this is more of a challenge.

On this issue, however, the answer is relatively straightforward. I'll come to it in a moment.

Thailand has faced many paradoxes in the past. Last week, I received a visit from a group of international fund managers on a fact-finding mission. They too had one of those annoyingly straightforward questions: What's going on in this country of yours?

Actually, they had another question: Is there going to be another coup?

How would you have answered either of these questions?

I suppose if you were pro-government you might say that the rules (read: Constitution) was making it impossible to govern.

If you were on the other side you might reply that it's because the government coalition parties need to cheat in order to operate at all.

The point is that a casual observer can only be confused. Here we have a Constitution that was drafted by appointees, but was the only constitution to have ever been approved by the majority of voters in a national referendum _ yet just after a few months of use, the ruling government is claiming that it needs to be amended and _ wait _ this time round the people need not be involved?

What, indeed, is going on in this country?

As for the second question regarding the coup, I simply said that I have ceased to be surprised by coups.

On the economic front, we are facing the biggest paradox of all. Why is a country in which 60% of the population is involved in agriculture, and which is the world's largest exporter of rice (about 30% market share), so worried about the rise in the price of its most famous

KORN CHATIKAVANIJ