Thailand's political plot is thickening
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The scriptwriters are gathering somewhere that very few humans know exists. They have approximately 45 days to come up with a sensible "next chapter" for Thailand.
One of them, either hit by a brainwave or influenced by something he smoked, had written that the country’s interim legislature decided to start impeachment procedures against ex-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. What he wrote escaped the rest, who were either asleep or busy doing something else. The urgently-called story conference was specifically meant for damage control.
Scriptwriter 1: How did we go from that song about peace, promise and patience to this crap?
Scriptwriter 2: Ask 5. He wrote about the impeachment decision.
Scriptwriter 3: And we all have to take responsibility for his moment of madness.
Scriptwriter 4: Easy guys. Shouldn’t we hear what he has to say about it first? Number 5, why did you do it?
Scriptwriter 5: To begin with, the coup was our consensus, right? What would a coup be without a crackdown on corruption? I thought I was just saving you lot from a boring routine.
Scriptwriter 1: You moron. We had just made Prayut go to Italy and speak of pre-coup threats of a civil war, and you’ve put in a possible new spark.
Scriptwriter 5: With all due respect guys, the “rice scam” was not my idea. And I’m not the one who went on and on about how much it cost Thailand. No writer could invent such a mammoth scandal and let it lie.
Scriptwriter 2: If you had any common sense, you’d see you’ve given the interim Parliament a no-win situation. You basically wrote that the head of the interim Parliament is a suicidal idiot.
Scriptwriter 5: Did I? How so?
Scriptwriter 3: You really need to get your head checked. Impeach Yingluck and we’ll have a military-installed legislature “persecuting” a democratically elected leader. Acquit her and people will ask why the coup? We should have kept the impeachment thing for a late chapter. You are making our job very, very difficult.
Scriptwriter 4: Can impeachment be put on hold?
Scriptwriter 1: No. Unfortunately, the vote will have to take place some time in the middle of December. I’m afraid our options today are limited to “guilty” or “not guilty”.
Scriptwriter 2 (sighing): I’d go for guilty. That would limit the immediate future chapters to domestic consequences. “Not guilty” and we’d have to write about the United States, the EU, the Wall Street Journal and all the bloggers. I’m tired of that.
Scriptwriter 3: “Guilty” will force us to write about all those you mentioned as well, at least for a few days. But I know what you mean. We’ve made them give textbook reactions to the Thai crisis for too long.
Scriptwriter 4: What should we say about the red shirts if it’s “guilty”?
Scriptwriter 1: That’s the biggest question, because I think that, somehow, “guilty” is unavoidable.
Scriptwriter 5: Another red shirt revolt, anyone?
Scriptwriter 2: You really like messy stuff, don’t you?
Scriptwriter 5: As if we haven’t made it a big mess in an endless circle already.
Scriptwriter 3: We can have the military put it all under control.
Scriptwriter 4: At the expense of the reform process. We can’t make it a smooth process if we cruelly put away a leader of one side. Yingluck will have to be banned for five years, and we will need to be convincing on how her side of the Thai divide reacts.
Scriptwriter 1: We have had all key red leaders tamed since the coup. We have had all their birthday parties closely watched by the military. A subdued red reaction won’t be too unrealistic.
Scriptwriter 2 (having a second thought): If we decide to impeach Yingluck, our chapters on the coup against Thaksin, the guilty verdict on his Ratchadapisek land scandal, and the 2007 Constitution will look very silly. Well, it goes without saying that not impeaching her will make this year’s coup quite ridiculous, too.
Scriptwriter 3: Can we have the interim Parliament vote to defer the issue to a post-election legislature? Or, can we have Prayut assert his all-round powers to postpone the impeachment thing for the sake of “national happiness”?
Scriptwriter 5: 700 billion baht, boys. 700 billion. We can’t come up with that staggering loss and then let the politicians who are “responsible” sort it out. Our story is a mess, but it should be a reasonable mess. Last but not least, we have made it clear that “happiness” means different things to different Thais.
Scriptwriter 1: Exactly how many days do we have?
Scriptwriter 2: There will have to be a vote when Thais start shopping for Christmas and New Year.
Scriptwriter 3: This is sadistic. Look what you’ve done, Number 5.
Scriptwriter 5: You people should have thanked me for not writing anything about the criminal procedures. Now, it’s up to you to decide whether the public prosecutors prosecute her. And you have to do it a lot sooner. In just a couple of days to be exact. Write well, boys, because this time it involves prison, not a political ban.
Scriptwriters 1,2,3 and 4: SHUT UP!!!!
