With great finesse and subtlety, and with the confused public not taking much notice, Premier Surayud Chulanont has somehow morphed into a master of ambiguities, with his answers to the most politically sensitive questions. And he doesn't seem one bit concerned about what has become his signature ambivalence.

While most people think having a cool head and being perpetually vague about the country's major issues may be qualities that are too diametrically opposed, the interim prime minister doesn't seem to subscribe to that logic. He has chosen to be ambiguous to prove that he can survive any attempt to pin him down on all burning questions.

The premier has, for example, kept speculation alive over soured relations with Council for National Security (CNS) chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, by remaining ambivalent.

Instead of explaining why his ties with his former subordinate - now technically his boss - remain as solid as he claims them to be, General Surayud keeps going back to history by insisting that he had never wanted to take up the premiership anyway.

"He came to me a few times to ask me to assume the leadership of the interim government. He told me that if I didn't accept it, he would be dead!" Surayud said on television on Saturday. If he thought that story would deter any attempt by Sonthi to sack him, his following statement clearly blunted it all.

When he was asked if he was afraid the CNS chairman might force him out of the position, the prime minister said: "He doesn't have to give me the sack. All he has to do is simply to tell me he wants somebody else in this position…"

And just when people were beginning to believe that things couldn't get any worse, Surayud told the whole country that he couldn't say whether he would be able to stay the full term until the election "because there are certain things you simply can't predict about the future".

Was he trying to stem the negative rumours about him and the coup leader? Or was he, in fact, fanning such speculation?

The premier waited a few weeks before he (almost) reluctantly came out to deny a somewhat absurd "conspiracy theory" floated by some of his critics that he was in fact in collusion with Thaksin Shinawatra - the man ousted by the September 19 coup with which he was inevitably linked.

And when he did deny that ridiculous allegation, he made it sound as if it was with a great deal of reluctance that he had to make a public statement that he was in no way in cahoots with the man supposedly subverting his political base at every turn over the past six months.

He was supposedly exuding great confidence the other day when, in answer to a direct question from a reporter as to whether there could be another coup in the near future, the premier declared: "A coup is unlikely to be successful under the prevailing conditions."

Granted it wasn't the toughest statement he has ever made in his brief full-blown political life, however that response could still have carried some weight had he not added, as if it were an afterthought: "Who would do it?"

Was he saying that no military officer he knows is in a position to carry out another military takeover?

Or was he suggesting that perhaps he was in no position himself to know who's plotting what against whom? His undeclared strategy, it seems, is to keep everybody else guessing what he really thinks. 

When you are never quite sure whether the premier is asking a question or making a statement - and the issues in question aren't after-dinner jokes - that's when his leadership is in serious doubt.

Suthichai Yoon

The Nation