The first wrong button

This weekend’s anti-government protest is expected to be massive, and what leads to it has a very long history, of which the beginning remains highly debatable.

To be fair to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, she apparently meant no harm in her now-infamous phone conversation with Cambodia’s strongman Hun Sen. But as a leader, she was undoubtedly way too naïve for comfort.

The trust is in tatters regardless.

But which was the first button that had been buttoned wrongly? The decision to put a Shinawatra in charge? Her “persecuted” family seeking help from Phnom Penh in the past? Or were those developments just follow-up buttons?

Was it the freakish Pheu Thai-conservative alliance, or did the first wrong button go back further? Was it when Thailand put Thaksin Shinawatra out of power and inadvertently sent his family to Hun Sen, allowing the possibility of one of the biggest “blackmails” politics has ever seen?

Or was Thaksin just a proxy in a power play dating back about a century? If that was the case, what was the first wrong button?

It’s basically the same mess that America has gotten itself into. The American shirt was buttoned wrongly from the start, so all the remaining buttons were inevitably in the wrong places.

The inability to condemn the Gaza atrocities. The need to veto every United Nations Security Council attempt to condemn them. The failure to condemn Israel’s act of aggression towards Iran. The political “necessity” to bomb Iran itself.

This is America of all the countries losing its way, but which was the first wrong button? Allowing enormous Israel-connected funds and other influences into the United States? Misguided policies or concepts about Christianity and Islam that previous governments, rulers or even founders were responsible for?

Like in the Paetongtarn case, one mistake leads to another, and another, and another. And like the Paetongtarn case, trust and credibility lie in tatters.

America probably has not been blackmailed, but the fact that it has come to depend on many things Israeli is a remarkably wrong course.

People use the button analogy because the first error was always unnoticeable and apparently harmless. But the analogy does not take into account the fact that while we can easily correct the wrong buttoning of our shirts, the Paetongtarn mess is hard to redress.

Saturday’s anti-Paetongtarn protest is expected to be huge and highly consequential. Most importantly, it can lead to another wrong button in the blink of an eye.

A lot will depend on what Hun Sen has to say further about the man who used to be one of his best friends and a guest of honour. As if Thaksin and his daughter aren’t doomed already.

Pheu Thai has one more name left on its prime ministerial nomination list, but Chaikasem Nitisiri is reportedly too ill to take up demanding obligations, although all the noises from Pheu Thai are suggesting otherwise.

Remaining nominees on the coalition side have their own serious problems.

The United Thai Nation Party is not only too small. It’s also fractious and its leader Pirapan Salirathavibhaga is no longer a darling of the conservatives and may face legal questions blocking a promotion to the premiership.

The other coalition partners are more or less in the same situation, although legal issues are not their concern. They might take a shot at the premiership, but such a bid can be futile. Even if one becomes successful, the prime minister emerging from it will be an extreme and most vulnerable lame duck.

A House dissolution is Pheu Thai handing everything to the People’s Party on a plate. And, again, it could lead to another wrong button.

Assuming the House of Representatives is dissolved and the People’s Party wins the snap election, it will lack the ability to effectively rule singlehandedly. Ideologically, it can be euphoric, but realistically it can be a nightmare.

And unless the People’s Party scores an unprecedented landslide, it will need to build a substantial alliance. More wrong buttons then, be it Pheu Thai or the conservatives.

Two other possibilities include a royal appointee, who must have to be good enough to fight off same-old politics and take the country out of the cursed circle that he or she is admittedly a part of, or a coup.

Each of the scenarios has more or fewer risks than the others. But they all share the same first wrong button.

The headline of a Paetongtarn-related YouTube clip somehow sums up the misery of Thailand’s wrong turn: “Leader who’s busy worrying about her own problems”.

That is resounding. How can Paetongtarn pay attention to ordinary issues facing ordinary Thais when she has to deal with Hun Sen’s clip one day and handle the Alpine controversy the next? How can she act on housing for the poor when the place where her father used to sleep in is coming back to haunt her?

Who is the enemy of the state? A foreign “uncle” who gave your family a much-needed sanctuary without whom you wouldn’t have been the prime minister of Thailand today, and who is being “thanked” by many Thais for “exposing” your family?

It’s a big mess and it’s all because of the first wrong button.