With populist policies driving the popularity of the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) and more or less keeping them in power, there is a limit on just how much funding there is to make them happen. With huge financial bleeding getting harder and harder to ignore and seeing that some populist policies are unsustainable without Bankrupting Thailand, some serious discussions are going on about the ability of the PTP to be reelected into power if there is no money for populist policies.
If you think of any fighter jet that has afterburners, you can quickly conclude that when the afterburners are lit the fuel is quickly consumed. Looking at Thaksin’s logic to come back to Thailand, that can only happen if his party is in power. So to light those populist policy afterburners just to stay in power, common sense says although they are effective, they are not sustainable for prolonged periods.
Based on recent decisions by the PTP lead Government, it is clear they need to keep the throttle near full power or risk being voted out of office. Thaksin has repeated several times not to do anything that could destabilize the government. That has been obvious in that the PTP have pushed and then backed away from changing the Constitution and also the same with amnesty bills. Each and every time they come to the front burner, political instability starts with talks of protests and other such risks.
As more dots come into view, we at Connecting the Dots are seeing that things to get Thaksin back are taking far longer than originally planned. As a result the populist policy fiscal bleeding is digging deeper and deeper into government reserves and that is raising alarms that eventually will become loud enough to rally around. If enough people conclude that the populist policies are doing significant damage to Thailand’s future, it could spell the beginning of the end for the PTP. If that happens, Thaksin can more or less write off walking on Thai soil ever again unless he does his jail time. However as Thaksin is arrogant and does not know enough to give up, there will be some new twist that is not yet visible.
This all resembles a classic World War II military tactic being executed by the Anti Thaksin parties. That tactic is to simply run Thaksin out of fuel and then take control. There were some historic tank battles that did the same. The more powerful German tanks simply became harmless when their fuel tanks were empty. At that point it was just simply target practice shooting taking them out of service forever.
So it looks as if the stage is being set for an unavoidable political conflict that will be a catch 22 for the PTP, and it already looks like the seeds of that conflict are being planted as the cost of the populist policies is being displayed more and more in the media. By educating the Thai people to the true costs of excessive populist policies, one can quickly conclude what dots will follow.
