If the draft charter contains a clause allowing those who don't come from an election to be prime minister, I will vote against it. This is just a statement of resignation, not a warning, because if the drafters and whoever is pushing for this controversial agenda have made up their minds about inserting it into the draft, they simply can't be reasoned with.

Yes, it's going to drastically alter a lot of people's perspectives on the September 19 coup. I can handle the slow asset investigation, and even the lack of concrete legal evidence of "policy corruption". I can forgive and forget the economic mishaps, laugh at the Somkid fiasco and convince myself that Chalongphob Sussangkarn will get lucky and fare better than MR Pridiyathorn Devakula.

But a draft charter paving the way for a non-elected prime minister, in this period of great national divide and turmoil ... that will do it.

The "last straw" is supposed to be something light. Such a charter clause, however, will be a mega-ton weight dumped onto the camel's back. No, it will be a dynamite blast that will also blow everything else away. People are recalling 1992, but even then our country was far less polarised, complicated and volatile.

If something bad is going to happen, it might easily be worse than the Black May crisis.

It's not clear how one glaring fact has escaped the Constitution Drafting Assembly, the Surayud government and the Council for National Security. If the non-elected prime minister proposal is a really good idea, how come its most prominent publicist to date has been General Suchinda Kraprayoon, whose controversial rise to the premiership through a constitutional loophole triggered the 1992 bloodbath?

The "normal" pros and cons are not an important issue. Countries including ours have had heroic non-elected leaders and, of course, in peace time it just might do some good to give ourselves more options. Floating the proposal right now would only do one thing: it would set a massive political time-bomb ticking.

That is either foolish or unpatriotic. Facing daily accusations from their arch enemies that the September 19 coup was a conspiracy to replant a military foothold in politics - and growing suspicion among the neutral that real democracy may not be returned after the next election - the CDA and the interim leaders are doing their best to show off apparently ulterior motives.

No need for Thaksin Shinawatra to send a Trojan horse.

And if the proposal does go to the CDA floor, he will be kicking himself wondering why he had to waste his money hiring expensive lobbyists.

But the interim leadership's credibility will be the least of my concerns. Our country is simply not ready for another mammoth divisive issue, one that is capable of de-railing the already shaky political reform, bringing tens of thousands back onto the streets and playing nicely into the hands of whoever has malicious intent.

It will be hard to consider that anyone who has no qualms about throwing this bombshell onto our nation's smouldering political landscape is patriotic.

And that bombshell will be in spite of the fact Thailand has come to this point because Thaksin Shinawatra was an "elected" prime minister.

Our problems stemmed from abuses of power and disrespect for one of the best and most democratic charters we have ever had. The 1997 Constitution was capable of pre-empting Ample Rich, tax evasion and all the shady share transfers from snowballing into the current crisis.

Its true spirit was not upheld, and that's exactly why we are in this situation today.

To downgrade an excellent Constitution by assuming that "outsiders" are more qualified and less corrupt candidates for the premiership would be anything but visionary. It would be a very wrong cure. It would be like taking a major screw out of an undamaged part of our sputtering democracy bandwagon. It would mock the "reconciliation" and "true democracy" agendas of the interim leaders. It could turn "saviours" into destroyers overnight.

When the interim leaders stepped in last year, amid worldwide criticism, they tried to justify themselves by claiming that Thaksin was the exception, not the rule. They pointed at him and said here was an extraordinary circumstance that required suspension of democracy.

The non-elected prime minister proposal, if it proceeds into the new charter, will give them away. It will tell the world that, in their mentality, Thaksin was the rule, not the exception, in a democracy.

Dictatorships start this way.

 Tulsathit Taptim