Typically people will respond to more subtle signs that they have crossed the line, but that is not the case with Thaksin. With Thaksin, he needs to be physically removed as he ignores the wishes and desires of everyone else as those wishes and desires reflect common sense morals and ethics.
It seems nearly all the supports have given away for the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) and collapse is underway. For the most part everything is going wrong, but it is all at their own hand. The problem is, there may not be a lifeboat to jump to once things slip below the waves.
Perhaps the most embarrassing thing that shows how people feel about Thaksin and the PTP is the run on the Government Savings Bank for providing a loan to the Government to continue to fund the failed rice pledging scheme in what most likely will turn out to be a bad loan. 85 Billion Baht was withdrawn by customers of the bank in 3 days for fear their personal savings would go to fund a massively corrupt scheme. People remember how much influence Thaksin had over the bank when he was Prime Minister, and they simply do not trust the bank now with giving the loan to the Government. The run on the bank was so big, the bank’s President resigned as it was the right thing to do. However that hint went unheaded by the PTP.
But as much of this seems to be a domino effect and what goes around comes around, as the failed rice pledging scheme was more or less seen as vote buying using state funds and the rice farmers trust in the Government caused them to risk all, now will most likely cause them to vote in the opposite way as the farmers are flat broke as a result of the corruption in that scheme.
The continued fallout of that will cause the Prime Minister to face a variety of charges as she was the Chairperson of the scheme. So you would think stepping down would be the right thing to do for bringing such harm to the poorest of Thais and costing Thailand Billions of Baht as well as it’s reputation in the rice market, but no not a chance of that and only being forcefully removed with legal means will make that happen.
Then we come to the blanket Amnesty bill that roughly 90% of all Thais rejected and the 10% that did not are most likely the same 10% who are regular criminals and always in trouble with the law for one thing or another. That Amnesty bill was all about getting Thaksin off the hook and that was the arrogant straw that broke the camels back. That brought out masses of Thai people into the street to protest. That protest is being lead by Suthep Thaugsuban of the newly formed People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC). At one point there were about 3.5 million whistle blowing Thais in the streets of Bangkok chanting for the Government to step down, but that less than subtle deafening roar clue was also missed.
Then the issue of the State of Emergency that was called without genuine reason and was clearly intended to end the PDRC protests. However the court ruled that the PDRC protests were legal and protected by the Constitution and not to touch them. However with the arrogance of the Government they proceeded to try to disburse the legal protests and that resulted in at least 5 people dead and 70 hurt. The very next day the court ruled that the Government could not use the State of Emergency as an excuse to disburse the protesters, thus repeating what the court already said. The Government clearly knew this before but proceeded to violate the court order anyway because it was not what they wanted to hear.
So being unhappy with the court’s ruling, the PTP set about to appeal the ruling so they could go ahead and violate the constitutional right to peaceful protests simply because they were the target of the protests. However they would be going up against two courts being The Constitutional court and the Civil Court who both agreed the Government had no right or authority to stop peaceful and law abiding protests just because they don’t like them.
So this leaves the same behavior as before where the Thaksin supporting Government will not step down on their own and will only be removed by the courts or the military. They have once again displayed they care nothing for the people they govern, they only care about themselves and will find the smallest and most absurd smokers excuse to continue to stay in power.
