"If it has to tender for the floated shares, the tender price would be Bt272 per share and PTT would need a total of Bt360 billion for the tender offer," he said. He did not reveal why his projection was much higher than the Bt200 billion amount some brokerage houses have estimated.

He also said that in economic terms, the tender did not make sense as the impact would be unimaginably huge.

But right after making his statement, he assumed a serious face and instructed reporters not to highlight his comments. Apparently, like other officials, Thirachai does not want to speak out loud about this issue.

If he had shown favour to the consumer groups' petition, he would have agitated finance officials as well as the prime minister, who was cited as one of the three defendants accused of illegally privatising PTT.

But had he explicitly blamed the consumer groups for causing chaos, he would also have been in the hot seat - a fate similar to what the SEC suffered from the issues related to Temasek Holdings' takeover of Shin Corp Plc.

Certainly, former prime minister Anand Panyarachun might well be upset that his urging people to take sides did not work with Thirachai. By the way, though, Anand might have referred only to political issues, not an economic case like the privatisation of PTT.