Rarely in recent Thai political history has a government minister been so honest, so open and so utterly truthful as was PM's Office Minister Kobsak Pootrakool last Sunday.
You may have missed that magical moment when Mr Kobsak faced the media and addressed preparations for the trip to Ubon Ratchathani and next door Amnat Charoen provinces in the far Northeast. Absolutely not, he said, there is no hidden agenda.
Analysis: 100% true.
The agenda of the latest two-day trip is an open book. The military regime is going hunting for support. They're going for the popular vote, sure. But more importantly, as everyone knows, the obvious and unhidden agenda known to 70 million people is to network with the gear-oilers, the money-men, the local powers and the vote-canvassers who own the art of persuasion with their folks in the towns and villages of the tri-border Northeast area.
At night, when traffic eases and the city is quieter, listen carefully.
There are people who swear they have heard first Deputy Prime Minister and world-class coup expert Gen Prawit (The Watchman) Wongsuwon, crowing Patton-like at the top of his lungs, "Julius Caesar, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
Caesar didn't actually invent "divide and conquer" but he was the first despot to display it to the known world. He employed divida et impera to increase his power at home in Rome, and to expand the Roman Empire by dividing and prevailing over the tribes of Gaul.
So it's not that there's something historically unique about this regime's use of divide and conquer.
The ethics of the strategy are as clear as the constitution that legally encourages it.
It is literally fascinating -- in the sense of repellent -- to watch the general prime minister, the Watchman and their friends slowly, tediously change their May 14, 2014, intimidation-at-gunpoint coup into actual political power that could really win a free election by next year or the year after.
Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam emerged to explain that mobile cabinet trips are organised to gather feedback from the yokels ... oops, local residents. Yeah, yeah, but it's sort of like saying the reason people go to the cinema is to check the comfort of the seats. Of the few who do, it's not the primary reason they bought a ticket, now, is it?
Political circles and obsessed media these days are on about the strange Sam Mitr group. The "three allies" aka The Three Amigos aren't themselves very strange.
But Gen (Ret) Prayut's three S-men have evolved faster than a finch on Darwin's Galapagos Island. You rarely see such a transformation outside of a gender-change operating theatre.
Along with brief political resumes, here are your Los Tres Amigos:
THE THREE AMIGOS: Suriya Jungrungreangkij, Somsak Thepsuthin and Somkid Jatusripitak have evolved 'faster than a finch on Darwin’s Galapagos Island'.
- Suriya Jungrungreangkij, founding member of the Thai Rak Thai Party of Lord Voldemort na Dubai. He was transport minister for Voldemort, 2002 to 2005, when a question of financial impropriety arose and he left government service about a year before his Lord.
- Somsak Thepsuthin, founding member of the Thai Rak Thai Party, was Voldemort's minister of industry until the bitter end, when an opaque military coup overthrew the government.
- Somkid Jatusripitak, current deputy PM, current economy tsar. He was a founding member of Lord Voldemort's Thai Rak Thai Party, but even before that was an adviser to foreign minister Voldemort in the pre-TRT days. In Voldemort's governments, he was finance minister and commerce minister, but most of all he was the ideological mastermind of his Lord's populism, both the strategy and the tactics, formulating the policies that made red the favourite, primary colour in many parts of the country for the past 17 years.
These are the men currently famous for supporting the green shirts and convincing their own former buddies of the red-shirt and Thai Rak Thai (Pheu Thai) persuasion to realise how wrong they have been for so many years.
The Three Amigos and aides are the advance men setting up influential figures with access to the general prime minister at the mobile cabinet meetings. They go back afterwards to explain the super-advantage of exchanging their red shirts for green.
Monday's trip to Ubon Ratchathani is Gen (Ret) Prayut's true Daniel-in-the-lion's-den moment. The province has been the deepest, most crimson form of red-shirt support. In that 2010 violence-cum-army crackdown, Ubon Ratchathani's was the first province headquarters set ablaze by red shirt arsonists.
If the pro-military party can divide, conquer and turn that region green, then it's kitty bar the door for traditional parties in the next election.
