If you were in Thailand or following the news when Thaksin Shinawatra was Prime Minister, you would have regularly seen things happen that made no sense at all. In fact most of the time the dead wrong choice was made leaving you wondering just how long they could survive.
Digging a bit deeper into that you would eventually come to the conclusion that those dead wrong decisions were all about Thaksin lining his pockets with money that belonged to the Thai people. Projects that were no brainers were put on hold until Thaksin could figure out a way to extract money for himself out of it. So typically the news would report that project ‘x’ would not be done. Then within a week or few suddenly project ‘x’ was revised with some enhancements that added cost plus to the project sending it through various skimming operations before the job foreman was handed the blueprints.
So you could see there was some self serving logic if you dig deep enough. There was a certain mentality back then that you could do anything you wanted and nothing would happen to you. Things would never reach final conclusion, and if they ever did get into the court system they would act like they were tied to a sled that is used in tractor pull competitions. The further you pull the sled the harder it gets until it finally stalls the tractor. That was all before the new Constitution.
The new Constitution unhooked that tractor pull sled and allowed things to move in the court. Even before the new Constitution laws were already in place that would render punishment, just getting there was the issue. The 2006 coup helped things along in the court and at least applied some grease to the bottom of that sled.
Once that happen people associated with Thaksin were getting picked off one by one or in huge bunches. The first big bunch was Thaksin’s party the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) was dissolved and Thaksin plus 110 others were banned from politics until June 1, 2012. That means no association with any political party in any status. The court made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion. Thaksin and the others were now poison to any party that would touch them.
The next big bunch that bit the dust associated with Thaksin was the People Power Party (PPP). They fell when one of their leaders forgot the lesson taught by the New Constitution. That lesson was play by the rules. Needless to say slow learners in that bunch cause the PPP to meet the same fate as the TRT and added to the numbers of poison politicians.
So now we come to the story about the next reincarnation of Thaksin’s TRT known as the Pheu Thai Party (PTP). News has broken that at least one PTP member of parliament has floated the idea that Thaksin should be an advisor to the PTP. If that were to happen, then the PTP would soon meet the same fate as the TRT and PPP, adding even more names to the poison politician list.
Certainly it goes without saying the PTP need Thaksin as they have not a clue what to do. However Thaksin can only be allowed just so close like a moth to flame. There is a fine line, and the PTP will no doubt try to pass that line saying they did not.
Apparently Darwin’s theory can be applied to Thai politics too.
Thuggie & co will lose the battle of survival unless they find the right balance between ‘letting go’ and ‘holding on’.