Normally notable for his silence, the Minister of Interior and inflatable blimp expert Gen Anupong Paojinda released the cat from his bag. His drones and workers, who had already begun setting up election facilities and security barriers, downed tools.
Normally notable for his loquaciousness, the general prime minister said this as the legal deadline made yet another election delay certain: Nothing.
The Interior Ministry under Gen Anupong is 100% responsible for actually making a national election work. It's mostly detail work, like arranging actual polling places and controlling access, to hiring the nice people who check ID cards and make sure each vote is cast secretly.
It's a big job, takes months to plan, weeks to carry out. And early last week, the entire apparatus at the Ministry of Interior halted. Gen Anupong ordered it all of it halted. "Okay, everyone, we're done here, stop what you're doing, go back to your regular job."
The sanitised version, when Gen Anupong spoke to the media: "The royal decree did not come down, therefore the Election Commission asked us to end... well, to delay the election preparations." The unstated idea being that said preparations will resume when... well, if an election date is set.
Out at the Government Complex in Nonthaburi province, the EC made it entirely clear. The president, Ittiporn Boonpracong, especially wanted the cabinet's legal eagle, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam to understand it. He spoke slowly.
"We don't have an election date. We won't have an election date until there is a royal decree. The government has to issue the royal decree."
Analysis: True.
The government clammed up completely. The only person who knows about the decree for sure is the general prime minister. So far this year, Gen (Ret) Prayut has said absolutely nothing about an election, where "absolutely" is an absolute word.
On Wednesday he sent out his official spokesperson, the former Bangkok Shutdown organiser Buddhipongse Punnakanta, to also say nothing, but in a few words. "Gen Prayut expects all those responsible for organising an election, which used to be scheduled for Feb 24, to do their jobs well."
Mr Wissanu had the onerous job of saying nothing with a lot of words as distraction. To be fair, he's a lawyer, so it wasn't that difficult.
The government's version of an explanation of an election delay is this.
It is going to take three to five months to count votes, certify completed polls, deal with complaints from disputed constituencies, get parliament in session (the King must open parliament, by law), and organise a government. An early election could or would put politics and the coronation at the same time.
There's an unofficial explanation. The government might be run out of office by the voters and the military regime would not be in charge during the coronation. But that makes the National Council for Peace and Order (junta) sound selfish and power-hungry. Probably not true then, right?
So, after six official election delays, we go to Plan B. Doesn't make sense, i.e. it makes as much sense as anything else.
According to the lawyer Mr Wissanu, designated talker among the Silent Sams, there's no reason to worry your pretty little heads, the government is here to help, and, "There will be an election in Febru.... erm, that is, not later than March." Or so.
Well, who knows? If the government continues to broadcast that there will be an election, laws of probability mean that eventually they will be correct, even if Plan B is hooey, as many suspect.
As high school students slash first-time voters pointed out in hundreds of vulgar tweets and Facebook posts directed at the general prime minister, the scandal here is no longer the lack of an election.
It is that the old maxim about how any old fool could arrange an election has turned out so wrong.