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Published on April 2, 2008

A political party member is not likely to last long if he or she takes on the party leader or other senior members. But in this case, you can immediately sense that there was a smokescreen. Kuthep elected to air his grievances against Samak and Chalerm with local daily Thai Rath alone.

Ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has just returned to Thailand. There is speculation as to whether Kuthep got the green light from the former prime minister to speak

Samak and Chalerm are not hard-core members of People Power. Samak was brought in to lead the party at a time when there was a leadership crisis in the remnants of the now defunct Thai Rak Thai Party, whose 111 executive members are barred from politics for five years. Chalerm did not play any role at all in helping PPP win the election. He was more of a broker, who tried to provide security for  Thaksin's return to Thailand. While Samak has sought to carve out his premiership without listening to the party line, Chalerm has won few allies and does not seem to have any strategy in running his office.

Kuthep did not pull his punches at all against Samak. He criticised the prime minister for speaking without thinking first. He said Samak should have focused on tackling economic problems rather than speaking on virtually all the nitty-gritty issues and engaging in a war of words with the media. He took issue with Samak's excuse that he was not the one who broke the story about a coup plot over the weekend, and that the media were to blame for sensationalising the news.

"I don't want the prime minister to have problems with the media and have them trading words with each other. The coup news stemmed from the prime minister before the media carried it on. This kind of news is not useful to the government or the public at all. I don't want the situation to continue like this because it does not bode well for the government," Kuthep said.

Then Kuthep hit out at Chalerm, saying that the interior minister should not have paid attention to the recent rally by the People's Alliance for Democracy, which is reactivating its political drive. Two years ago, the PAD played a crucial role in campaigning against Thaksin, eventually leading to the September 2006 coup.

Kuthep is part of a party panel monitoring the government's performance. He said over the past two months the government has not shown any strengths. Most of the news emanating from Government House is nonsensical. He called for the prime minister to adjust his strategy, otherwise the popularity of the government would dwindle.

Chusak Sirinil, a Prime Minister's Office minister, has also come out to put the brakes on Samak over his remarks about constitutional amendments. Samak said he did not agree personally with a proposal to amend Article 309 of the Constitution, but it was a People Power resolution. Chusak said he could not understand why Samak would say such a thing because there would be nothing wrong with amending Article 309, which covers dissolving political parties.

The road ahead for Samak and Chalerm is not going to be smooth as the internal infighting is likely to become more intense. But you can expect Samak to put up a big fight.

Piyanart Srivalo, Somroutai Sapsomboon

The Nation