Anti Thaksin protest half time break

After sitting and watching the game underway between the Anti Thaksin protesters and The Thai Government, a half time break is perhaps the best of any metaphor that will describe what is going on. There are several reasons for the pause, and all of them temporary. There certainly is a lot of confusion as to what is going on and who may have blinked. But you do need to weigh several things to see what is going on and we plant to list all of the known dots in this entry.

Perhaps the most significant dot is December 5 is the King’s birthday and is Fathers day in Thailand. So to be having protests on that day is just almost being un-Thai. So it is as good as excuse as any to regroup and honor the King.

The second dot is the head of the military has stepped in and other than the King, he alone has the most influence over feuding politicians as his honorary title is that of ‘Bouncer’. That title simply means he has the means to physically evict politicians from office. If more clarification on that is needed, ask Thaksin Shinawatra about how that works.

The third dot is the Thaksin Shinawatra grossly underestimated the resistance he would cause when he tried to force feed his let me off the hook amnesty bill on the Thai people and to the world for that matter. That has cause many more people to be united against him and turned a lot of his now former Red Shirt supporters into new foes. To recap, Thaksin is his own worst enemy.

The forth dot is Prime Minister Yingluck simply does not have what it takes for two reasons. One if she gets aggressive, her carefully cultivated image will be totally destroyed and there is no suitable backup at the moment. For the second reason, see dot number two.

The fifth dot is very closely related to the fourth dot, and that is the Foreign Minister has taken over the controls of the police involved in crowd suppression, and he gets his instructions from Thaksin Shinawatra directly. This dot has already been pointed out by the media, and the reasons are clear. He will place some insulation between the nastiness that is yet to come and Prime Minister Yingluck, thus giving her some political survivability if things end up going in their favor.

The sixth dot is the sudden openness to find some answers. This is simply something that must be played out to satisfy the people that actually have hope that Thaksin would exit politics and give up all that he has been fighting to regain for the last 7 years. That is the same Thaksin who said he has no reverse gear, and that is a self translating metaphor. So essentially once the sixth dot has played out, half time will be over.

The seventh dot is both sides are trying their best to make the other side look like the bad guy. With one of the driving forces behind the Anti Thaksin movement is his massive corruption and overall damage to Thailand, it was rather convenient that the annual global corruption rankings were just released. According to the ranking Thailand has slipped from 88 to 102 with a lower number being less corrupt. So with that information identifying the bad guys becomes a bit easier. For note in 2010 when the Democrats were in power the ranking was 78 as they still had a lot of cleaning up to do. The ranking list 177 countries.

So seeing that this pause just allows Thaksin time to regroup and that he has no intention of even giving up anything, it all comes down to what dot one or dot two will do, and most likely dot two will act, but certainly will want to let the Constitution resolve this first as it was designed to more or less limit corruption and keep want to be dictators away.


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