Connecting the Dots

In recent days their has been some speculation if Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva could politically survive with all the attacks going on. Even Connecting the Dots voiced some concern in the past, so we have decided to have an in-depth look.

Connecting the Dots could sum this up in one paragraph without much problem, but in this case to look to the future, we must first look to the past. Starting off with the December 2007 elections we saw the pro Thaksin People Power Party (PPP) elected, and the democratic party fell way short of being the dominant player. The other parties opted to align themselves with the PPP leaving the democrats to be the opposition party.

As the first 3 or 4 months of 2008 rolled along the PPP was busy doing things for Thaksin and they completely ignored the rest of the country. While this was going on they also completely ignored the law thinking it was the same old game back in play. About 4 months into the game they suddenly came to realize that the New Constitution had teeth and was very actively starting to look like a Great White shark attack. In both big and small bites the PPP was being eaten alive by the Constitution and eventually Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was consumed and forced from office for violating the Constitution.

But long before Samak Sundaravej was thrown from office the PPP had made it a top priority to gut the Constitution. This caused the collation parties to start to reevaluate their survivability while being aligned with the PPP. Just that thought alone started the momentum that eventually moved Abhisit Vejjajiva into the Prime Minister’s chair.

As time wore on the replacement Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat who just happened to be related to the now convicted fugitive Thaksin was even more inept sending the message that the bottom of the barrel had been reached, and anyone who had any ability to be a semi effective leader was already eaten by the Constitution. This further helped Abhisit into power.

When the PPP was finally eaten whole by the Constitution in December 2008, the other parties simply saw that for them to survive the Constitution, their best chance was with aligning themselves with the democrats. With that thought they did and elected Abhisit as Prime Minister.

So essentially if you take some fictional character or mythological character, they get their power from some external source. For Superman it is the yellow sun, for Green Lantern it is his ring, for Sampson it is his long hair. For Abhisit, it is the Constitution.

So seeing that the coalition parties are not without people who have problems and are in the courts waiting for the Constitution to take a bite out of them, they are working very hard at Abhisit to Change the Constitution. That would be like turning the sun red for Superman robbing him of his powers.

So if the Constitution is damaged, Abhisit’s days in politics are over because the political pool is still dirty and is resisting being cleaned. Following the straight and narrow does not pay as well as being corrupt, so for the moment they are tolerating Abhisit hoping they can some how persuade the self serving changes through. Meaning being nice is just an act.

So even if Abhisit was to step down now, the Constitution would continue to devour his replacements eventually returning Abhisit to power by default as being the best for the job. That is unless someone else came along who was better than Abhisit, but at the moment that is highly unlikely.

so in short Abhisit will survive if the constitution does. To put it in other terms, they are essentially Siamese twins.