Only one thing is certain: if the art of defending Thaksin Shinawatra was in its infancy five years ago, it is blossoming into its most advanced form now.

In 2001, it was a tiny, simple matter of "hidden shares" worth a meagre Bt10 billion. He was acquitted by the Constitution Court and life went on. Today, those shares have become a significant part of a deal that brought his family a tax-free Bt73 billion. As in 2001, the country is set for an election. And, once again, Thai society debates Thaksin's pros and cons - the effect he has had on democracy and his political ethics. In 2001, his supporters could focus their defence of him on what was arguably an "honest" mistake that had been made in the "past". His sale of Shin Corp shares to Temasek has changed that, because by concealing some of the shares his family was allowed to evade taxes. The Temasek deal and the resulting national divide show us what we can expect if the nation's rules are bent for an individual's sake. It's no surprise then that trying to defend Thaksin now is far more complicated - in both legal and moral terms.

If Thailand is to welcome him back, then it must be prepared for more farces involving our political system, our checks and balances mechanisms and our bureaucracy. We will have to be ready to, say, forgive the Revenue Department whenever its officials act more like Thaksin's tax lawyers than protectors of national interests, or believe the Commerce Ministry when it requests half a year to investigate the nationality of Kularb Kaew's owners to see if they are in fact Temasek nominees.

We must adopt the ability to find depressing news stories hilarious. For example, we must have been able to laugh when top revenue officials, confronted by the Auditor-General's Office over unpaid taxes involving the Shin Corp-Temasek takeover deal, did their best to look guilty as sin. We must be able to understand that, here in Thailand, when the national tax office is accused of helping the leader; the biggest issue is not the alleged conspiracy but whether or not another agency has the power to investigate them.

Re-embracing Thaksin means that we won't bother asking why the Revenue Department is avoiding the Auditor General's Office at all costs, when it must be simpler to bare all and set the record straight. And it means that we would be capable of absorbing the "Ruangkrai" saga with a sense of humour.

(To refresh your memory, Ruangkrai Leekitwattana is suing the Revenue Department for NOT accepting the return of his tax refund. Having purchased some shares at below-par prices from his father, he was originally taxed. However, after threatening to make a big political issue out of it by citing similarities between his share transfer and those between Thaksin and his children, the department refunded his payment. Claiming the department was guided by political motives and wanted to justify its decision not to tax the Shinawatras, Ruangkrai returned the refund cheque. The department, in turn, claimed that he had a political motive and refused to take back the Bt20,000 cheque.)

And yes, there's the unsettled issue of iTV's huge fine. We must, in this instance, be able to sit back and watch a comedy involving the Attorney General's Office, the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office. The fine is a staggering Bt75 billion, and we have seen Thaksin risk everything for far less money. Granted, he is no longer the "owner" of the television station, but rumour has it that this one issue can turn the controversial Shin Corp takeover deal upside down.

Finally, if Thaksin does come back as prime minister, we will have to accept that although many of us see these conflicts of interest as having a destabilising influence on democracy, they have become a fact of life. And we must sympathise with Thaksin whenever he complains, like he did a few days ago, that he has been under so much intense scrutiny that he's now afraid to breath too hard. "They will accuse me of taking too much of a share of the air," he said.

In a way, this statement just sums the whole thing up. The nation, as in 2001, is at a crossroads. Taking one direction means that what he has done is unacceptable; taking the other means accepting that what he has done, which has brought the country to this precarious spot, has become normal behaviour, like breathing air.

 Tulsathit Taptim