After promising the nation a Mercedes Benz C-500 of an anti-regime protest, activists produced a three-owner 2007 Toyota Corolla gathering. It impressed and struck fear into the hearts of, well, no one.
Naturally, then, the military regime went into its predictable and unnecessary full-on road rage and charged the 15 self-identified leaders of the shoutfest with sedition. Coup leader-and-commander Gen (Ret) Prayut Chan-o-cha and followers openly bragged that the protesters couldn't overthrow their way out of a 7-Eleven store and posed about the same threat to the regime as the new Ebola virus outbreak in Africa.
Armed with a lopsided constitution, a suffocating anti-crowd law and 99.99% of all legal guns in the country, the military leadership was, is and always will be anhedonian. They are viscerally incapable of being gracious winners, even over handicapped doofuses incapable of raising one one-hundredth of the size of a crowd that a 38-year-old rock star gets just for jogging along a highway.
The nasty revengeful, rub-it-in, kick them while they're down 'tude of the military is key reason for the results of The Poll, or, in military jargon, "that @#$%&! poll".
In the first day of a five-day survey on Facebook (and thus as scrupulously scientific as every government-approved poll only many magnitudes more inclusive), Gen Prayut racked up (rounded off) 26,000 votes of support. Those 26,000 believe he has done, and should keep doing a great job as prime minister and Retaliator-in-Chief. A measly 174,000 voted against him.
Saturday morning, the entire Facebook site "LoveGenPrayut" disappeared, replaced by Facebook's enigmatic message, "Sorry, this content isn't available right now". The site returned late Saturday, but minus the post with the poll.
A note from the "Admin team" at the site, known as LoveGenPrayut, claimed a hostile group had invaded the site, "breaking the law and causing chaos"
The last known results of the 'LoveGenPrayut' poll before it disappeared from the internet.
Just before it disappeared, the poll showed the general prime minister had an impressive 46,224 votes, against a mere and meagre 467,376 anti-regime malcontents. When the site returned, there was no poll and a profile photo of a broom.
As academic treasure (and Bangkok Post Oped contributor) Thitinan Pongsudhirak noted Friday, the true political future of Thailand isn't known because the power of social media is unmeasured. That is thanks to the tech-ignorance and reactionary, incurious outlook of the regime.
If you doubt that, consider what Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam bragged for the third month in a row. To him and the government, cryptocurrency remains "a mystery". Yet he also predicted bitcoins could be used to buy votes, assuming there ever is an election.
Sure they could. In the hilarious opinion of today's government, nefarious, dishonest political parties (English translation: Pheu Thai) will bribe voters with a free lunch and 0.0012 bitcoins. It's what villagers are clamouring for.
We think that way back in his consciousness, the general prime minister and a few of his inferiors in military-government affairs know what bothers people today. It why his Minister of Truth and regime propper-uppers keep harping on the huge successes of their Crackdown On Corruption. Not that they boast about exposing and prosecuting the Case of the 25 Watches.
Maybe in August. Or, more likely, probably not.
Last Thursday, police commandos conducted dawn raids to arrest senior monks. Any bets on how ex-Phra Buddha Isara's case of theft, abduction and misuse of royal initials will be proceeding by August?
And the massive theft of welfare for poor people. Last week's revelation was that government officials in Sing Buri bought rubbish blankets at high prices, foisted them off on poor people who didn't need them -- and pocketed the difference. No charges, though.
On the annual coup anniversary Tuesday, the National Allowing Corruption Commission (NACC) that isn't investigating the 25 watches announced it had finished investigating the case of the purchase from con men of 500 Alpha-6 totally worthless magic "drug detectors" for 350 million baht.
Twelve years ago.
And you'll never guess how many government ministers and army chiefs (currently in government) the NACC found responsible. Whoa! Yes, "zero" is correct. How did you know?
But as the general prime minister boasted in January, he is an ex-army general and a current politician.
Indeed he is. After four years of alternately ignoring and disrespecting P-Move as snudges and freeloaders, Gen (Ret) Prayut reversed his opinion. He signed a decree permitting forest dwellers to dwell in the forest, as they've been asking.
The People's Movement for a Just Society (P-Move) and its fellow grassroots organisation the Four-Region Slum Network weren't that impressed.They released a "Dear Prime Minister" tirade centring on corruption, particularly the huge thefts from welfare funds in virtually every province of the country.
The deepest cut: "If this were a democracy, the people would have already voted to find better representatives."
A criticism to remember as the country hurtles towards a possible 2019 election.