A fair question to ask in Thailand is can Thaksin buy enough people to uproot Abhisit’s democracy and his stance on corruption, or will democracy win out in the end. It is an unspoken concern no doubt with consequences that will cause a red check mark or a green check mark on Thailand on a global map.
This is probably one of the most serious questions Connecting the Dots has addressed as it does pose the name of the next chapter in Thailand’s history. So that it is understandable that much more time and thought than usual is going into this analysis.
Probably the best place to start off is with the players Abhisit and Thaksin. Abhisit is a very smart person and thus far all the decisions he has made have been shaped by his western education. They make perfect sense to people from west of the Nile river, but lack the cunning needed to deal with Thaksin who is no stranger to not playing by the rules. In fact in Thailand there are precious few people that can match Thaksin in knowing what he plans next, and that will be key to who holds the keys to Thailand.
The most obvious match to counter Thaksin is non other than the General that lead the 2006 coup General Sonthi Boonyaratglin. Before Connecting the Dots was born it was noted by several people that General Sonthi and Richard from Connecting the Dots thought exactly the same. The same conclusions were reached and how to deal with Thaksin and others. The score was an exact match, and that was part of the motivation to Start Connecting the Dots. The one difference was General Sonthi had access to real time information and Richard did not. But non the less Richard from Connecting the Dots knew what the next headline would be before it came out unless there was some critical bit of information that was missing.
As for Thaksin, he is a Multi-Tasker and Abhisit has yet to show this quality. Because of that Thaksin has an edge over Abhisit. The red shirt rallies are the diversion while Thaksin is busy quietly buying people, but Abhisit seems only focused on the Red Shirts. If Thaksin was not a Multi-Tasker then Abhisit would be a fair match. Also Thaksin seems to make brilliant tactical decisions on the fly, but Abhisit is much more thorough before making a call. No doubt in part because Abhisit is cutting the teeth on the new Constitution and each decision must be tested against the Constitution to not fall into a Thaksin trap. This tactic by Thaksin is non other than the modern day version of the Trojan Horse.
There are other team players working for Abhisit, but none stand out as a match for Thaksin. There seems to be a lack of independent thinking and the ideas must all run through the Abhisit CPU before they can be acted on. So although collectively there may be adequate resources for Abhisit to do battle with Thaksin, they all have a very narrow field of view that is certainly a handicap.
Next Part 2
