In an effort to divert attention from themselves, The People Power Party (PPP) looks for any excuse to have people look away. The suggestion of a Referendum on the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) seems to fit the bill.
The PPP are well aware that they are the heart of Thailand’s problems, but they will continue to deny it and find ways to divert attention to others. Essentially suggesting a referendum on the PAD amounts to a referendum on the effect and not the cause. Polls have already shown the PPP approval and performance rating is well below par. But that is of no concern to the PPP as long as they can find someone or something else to take the spotlight. Even the event Saturday August 30 that included the royal family was played up much more than usual for such an event.
Finding a scape goat for the police and their use of force is just another example. Playing up anything they can find seems to work.
Even exaggerated charges like treason and suggested evidence like finding weapons and drugs just lying around adds to the hoped diversion. Leaving drugs and weapons lying around in public places just does not seem to fit expected behaviors of people who would have drugs or weapons on themselves. However ditching the evidence if the police are after you does. Even if that was the case it still leaves unconnected evidence to a person. Simply this is just more diversions by the PPP to shift negative attention to the PAD and away from themselves.
Even Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej avoided the Senate and their inquiry by barking the entire time and then walking out hours before the inquiry was set to end.
The clearly staged set of domino events that lead to the state of emergency is another wonderful distraction. (1) Call up and bus in an army of drunk rowdy violence prone Thaksin and PPP supporters. (2) Send them marching on a peaceful crowd of anti Thaksin and PPP demonstrators knowing there will be violence. (3) Call a state of emergency citing others as the problem. (4) Send in the police and military to disburse the peaceful court protected rally. (5) Arrest the leaders of the rally and make a public examples of them, and you have a wonderful distraction that could go in for quite some time with all the fallout.
Simply doing everything except the right thing will be attempted by the PPP, and when that is done they will see if they can get a second round out of any of it. If this at all sounds familiar, you can find similar behavior by a guilty person looking to blame another.
It is increasingly obvious that the PPP will not leave voluntarily and that some third party will have to break the impasse. Capable third parties are limited to two, being a military intervention in the form of a coup, or direct intervention from the King. Other options will have limited effect being possible severe splits inside the PPP coalition. That will leave the PPP crippled but still in the game.
The concern that the PPP otherwise know as Thaksin cronies will simply be reincarnated and return is a strong likelihood. The only stop to that cycle is in the courts with convictions of corrupt Thaksin cronies. However that process is slow, thorough and methodical. As a result their may be a few more cycles of the calendar before some level of contentment can be achieved in Thailand. It will be a long time before all the corrupt Thaksin cronies are picked off one by one in the court.
The other way to accelerate this process is the conviction and incarceration of Thaksin himself. However for that to happen will require certain events outside of Thailand to happen.
