COMMENTARY
THIRASANT MANN
Drop 5So our man from the North who calls himself South was granted the court's permission to go East, from where he absconded West to book a front-row seat at the 2012 Olympics. He must be sitting in front of the TV gleefully watching Pad-thai being bashed.
Nothing would please the authorities here more than if he really were to remain ensconsed in the lavendered luxury of Kensington Gardens for four years, shopping for political asylum and other sundries till his money ran out. Rumours say he might even go native in Bermuda if the London option doesn't work out.
Four years is a long time, politically speaking. In four months, all the major political parties in Thailand could become extinct, pronounced dead from varying strains of the political disease called electoral misconduct.
It is certain, however, that the fugitive will have to say bye-bye to his billions. And to think that two years ago his former mentor Maj-Gen Chamlong had told him to donate 26 billion baht to the country's poor, in lieu of the capital gains tax exempted for his sale of Shin Corp shares to Temasek. ''Donate the 26 billion baht in waived tax to the state, especially to help the poor, and more than 46 billion baht will still be left _ enough for spending even if one lived through 100 reincarnations,'' Maj-Gen Chamlong said at the time.
Had he followed that advice, the issue of his ''corruption'' would not have arisen and he'd likely still be PM and a billionaire. Now, instead of 26 billion, he and his family were losing more than 73 billion baht. But that's how the egotistic cookie crumbles.
Talking of egos, that of his mentor is being mauled at this very moment. His ''Final Battle'' to bring down the government isn't panning out. The plan was that taking over Govt House and storming NBT television station would elicit violent retribution, ultimately forcing the military to step in and ask the elected govt at polite gunpoint to ''prease reave''. But, oh bereavement, PM Samak has played the judiciary card, magically turning the ku-chart people into kabot, from salvagers of the nation, to guilty of insurrection. Wow.
The veteran PM _ who has witnessed worse political scenarios, such as the Oct 6, 1976 incident in which ''one student'' was massacred _ will never dissolve parliament if he can help it. And he's not asking the military to intervene, either.
As it is, the military isn't keen on another coup. The Sept 2006 exercise, the interim govt and the new constitution notwithstanding, the Dec 23 elections democratically returned many of the same faces to parliament, minus their leader, of course _ who returned only to abscond. So another coup would be pointless. Let the riot police, armed with court orders, handle the Pad-thai.
But there is also a new angle to watch. If Maj-Gen Chamlong and his Pad-thai cohorts are arrested, will the Gandhian's die-hard friend and former deputy director of the Internal Security Operations Command, take any action? Gen Panlop Pinmanee has said on TV that if he steps in, his strategy won't take 90 days to come to fruition. This is the man who was in charge when troops stormed Kru Se mosque in Pattani.
But the worst thing for Pad-thai is that by attacking NBT and Govt House, they have lost the support of the law-abiding citizen. After all this talk of non-violence, the people are being instigated to attack the govt. While a minor skirmish was under way at the Metropolitan Police headquarters, Pad-thai supporters lobbed tear-gas canisters into the crowd and blamed the riot police. So much for ahimsa. So the good man in the street is still stuck between the bad and the ugly. Where's the choice?
Thirasant Mann is a sub-editor of Bangkok Post.
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