Just days into her Premiership, Yingluck Shinawatra has ruffled international feathers by deciding not to make Lao PDR the destination of her first trip abroad.

It has become a tradition for new Thai Prime Ministers to make their first foreign foray to our northern neighbour. There, Big Brother (or now Sister) Thailand can make reassuringly condescending noises about taking care of ‘Little Brother’ Lao. That goes down a treat in Vientiane as the Chinese slowly tighten their economic stranglehold on the country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained this departure from normal protocol by referring to a new principle of governance embraced by the Yingluck administration. ‘The ASEAN countries will be visited in alphabetical order,’ said Ministry Spokesperson Aekachai Phinit-aksorn (who later revealed that he got his job because he was ‘first in line’ as a result of changing the spelling of his name from ‘Ekachai’).

The Prime Minister’s itinerary therefore should run: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, and finally Vietnam.

Unfortunately the heads of government in the ASEAN member states have failed to coordinate their calendars alphabetically and so far the order has in fact been: Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia and Lao. However, it is refreshing to see a government applying, as far as possible, impartial principles of administration to its priorities.

Things did not, however, go so well in Cabinet. Since Cabinet meetings are chronically overloaded, allowing an average of 2.36 minutes per agenda item, it is crucial for a Ministry to get its pet projects pushed to the top of the list.

In the past this has been done by the long-accepted principles of coalition government: bullying, bribery and sheer bloody-mindedness. But Ministers have realized that from now on, each Ministry will be treated in alphabetical order.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives was delighted. Not so the Ministry of Transport, who saw its snout pushed to the back of the trough. However, someone in the Ministry did some quick thinking and suggested changing its name to the ‘Ministry of Aeronautical, Marine and Terrestrial Transport’, which not only looks a lot grander on their letterhead and name cards, but elevated them to top of the order.

Not to be outdone, the Ministry of Commerce then changed its moniker to ‘Ministry of Accounting and Commerce’, relegating Transport to second place and Ag to third.

The PM seemed to go along with this, but put her foot down when the Minister of Education turned up calling himself the ‘Minister of ABC and Sums’ and demanding first dibs. There was a move to force the Ministry to go back to its old name, but on second thoughts it was accepted that the new name was probably a more accurate description of what the Ministry actually did.

Application of the alphabetical order principle to all aspects of government service has not been without its problems. Postmen and garbage collectors both complained that serving streets in alphabetical order took so much time that they never got to the end of the list. So while Soi Asoke was always spotless, Soi Yen-akat was filthy and went for weeks without mail.

Individuals whose names began with ‘Y’ were beginning to despair of ever getting served at government hospitals, passport offices, pawn shops and the like and were crowding into district offices to file for a change of name to something higher up the alphabet. Unfortunately for the Yuwadees and Yutthasaks of this world, they still had to wait until everyone else had changed their name.

Alphabetical government is of course not the only innovation of the Yingluck administration. On the initiative of the Minister of ABC and Sums, the problem of criminal corruption is to be solved by the simple expedient of making it transparent.

In the first phase of this project, well-heeled parents will be able to buy a superior education for their children by openly plonking fat envelopes on the school principal’s desk and getting both a seat for their offspring and a receipt for donations gratefully received. Of course, this was never called a ‘bribe’. ‘Tea money’ was the euphemism in educational circles. But it was still illegal.

As the project is rolled out, a market for police prosecutions will be set up where people can both get off charges and stick one to their enemies. This will be followed by a judicial commodities market for trading court verdicts. Eventually the highest level of government will become corruption-free as MPs and even Ministers will be sold off at open auction.

In strict alphabetical order, of course.