The free fall has been fast.
A week after the much-hoped-for election and things seem to be falling apart. The poll produced no clear winner, nor has it been generally trusted as a clean vote. It's possible the new government will take a long time to form, if at all.
As rival parties compete to form a coalition, a return to democracy is looking more like a trip down memory lane complete with the same old traps of political hatred, divisiveness and extremism, if not more intense and complex.
How long will the increasingly fragile peace last?
On social media, some people already posted photos showing where they would stand in case of new street protests. Others mused whether it's now time to buy new masks should they need to run from tear gas.
The Election Commission (EC) released 100% of the vote count last Thursday following pressure from political parties and the public.
The maths are still a mess.
Surprisingly, the commission revised the voter turnout to 38 million or 74% of eligible voters from its earlier announcement of about 33 million or 65%. The difference is about 4.4 million votes.
But wait. Can the number of voters go up or down as time goes by? Common knowledge would dictate that the number of people who did vote should be a fixed based on registration or the number of ballots given out, which should be known soon after the poll ended.
The EC gave the 33-million voter turnout number right after the election when it said the vote count was at 94%.
Did the EC mistake the voter turnout with the number of good ballots? Did it fail to clarify what exactly it meant when it revealed the voter turnout the first time? More importantly, the confusion has prompted people to wonder whether the EC knows what it is doing.
Another mysterious case occurred during its latest press conference when the voter turnout and number of ballots used did not match.
According to the EC, there were nine more ballots used than the number of people who voted. The gap is bizarre. Yet, the EC explained the phenomenon as bat khayeng, a phrase that might be translated as "ballots on one leg", "ballots standing on tiptoes" or "limping ballots" -- all of which do not seem to make sense.
The EC said the extra ballots were those that were taken by voters but not dropped into the ballot boxes for some reason, such as the wait being too long.
Could that be possible? Anyone who voted should know that once you were given a ballot, you were already in the voting station and there was essentially no wait. Voting booths and ballot boxes were just a few steps away.
Besides, who could have taken ballots out of voting stations without being stopped by officials or police manning the stations?
The more the EC has tried to explain itself, the more tangled and inconsistent its stories have become.
Adding to the "sham election" allegation, unofficial calculations of party-list MPs by media outlets and academics saw the quota ranging from 30,000 to 70,000 votes per MP for different parties.
It's true, the calculation based on the mixed-member proportional representation system is complex, with a maximum quota and overhang requirements. Still, it would appear very odd if one party has to win more than 70,000 votes to earn one party-list MP while another needs only 30,000.
The EC must explain the formula for calculating party-list MPs soon and its statement had better make more sense than before, or the existing confusion will slide out of hand.
At the moment, almost a million people have reportedly signed up to a petition to remove the EC. The problem is that it's not just the future of the seven commissioners that is at stake. It's the validity of the election and the country's hope for a new beginning that is embedded within it.
So far, the inconsistencies in the election results and numbers suggest gross incompetence on the EC's part. Apologies are no longer enough, even though the Thai public who paid for the commission to do this crucial job have not yet received any sincere ones. Accountability is due. So is complete transparency.
The commissioners should stop claiming they have done a flawless job and start showing raw data. Show the public photos of counting boards instead of mismatched numbers. Back all its unofficial results with indisputable evidence. Answer every question about alleged irregularities. And back it up with real data.
And if mistakes are found to have occurred, find out what went wrong and who should take responsibility.
It's that simple to be professional.
Atiya Achakulwisut is a columnist, Bangkok Post.