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The NGV bus saga is showing no sign of retreat and has obviously become the biggest thorn in Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's side now. There are many reasons, but the biggest one is the fact that he would have led a ferocious campaign to have the project killed if he had remained in the opposition bloc. This is surely the biggest price Abhisit has had to pay to date for agreeing to the political marriage with Newin Chidchob and his followers.

The project was initiated when Thailand's political turbulence kept attention largely away from what went on in the Cabinet meeting room. Former premier Samak Sundaravej was said to favour the scheme in its bigger version, costing over Bt100 billion compared to about Bt67 billion now, but even so the audacity of the financial figures proposed meant the plan has since been trimmed down, revised and re-submitted many times. The buck, however, is stopping at Abhisit.

He has shown some courage in delaying the project, as it is no secret that his political survival hinges very much on the very people pushing for the scheme. Yet Abhisit has done everything except really questioning certain outrageous data put forward by the project's advocates. Everyone knows that this project is "too expensive" and that the maintenance charges are suspiciously high - at Bt2,250 a day, every day, for 10 years. What everyone wants to hear is Abhisit saying exactly so, loud and clear.

It would be very unorthodox for a government leader to come out to the media and express suspicion that a state project may be susceptible to corruption. But this is a project that is criticised by just about everyone except those proposing it. There must come a time when Abhisit stops being polite and addresses not the vague issue of "high prices", but the glaring loopholes for graft.

Despite the tough political complications the project presents, the real controversy - the one affecting people and their tax money - is a very simple question of whether the scheme could be much cheaper. It will not be so difficult to find out whether the 4,000 new buses really require such expensive daily maintenance.

There are practical ways to handle this issue. The Cabinet can, for instance, approve the leasing of 500 to 1,000 buses and do good monitoring of the "experimental" phase to determine what kind of servicing the vehicles require. A six- to 10- month trial could answer many questions and at the same time help ease the concerns of the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority over its ageing fleet of buses.

Scepticism is getting stronger, and Abhisit must be very careful and make sure it does not grow into an outrage. This is a controversy with all the ingredients needed to explode into a scandal.

It involves something people live with every day. The figures are easy to understand. And what looks wrong is blatant.

The Cabinet this week decided to forward the project to the National Economic and Social Development Board, which will conduct a comparative study on the pros and cons of leasing and purchasing 4,000 buses. That sounded like a reasonable idea, but only if the NESDB comes up with a definite proposal. A vague "conclusion" will only make things worse for the government politically.

It is an irony that if Abhisit shoots down the project, he will have the majority of the public on his side. Of course, it would have been a lot easier had the Bhum Jai Thai Party not been such an important ally. But again, the Democrat leader must have had this kind of dilemma in view when he agreed to get support from the Newin group while vying for the chief executive's post at the end of last year.

Abhisit must know then that principles do give way to compromise. But while politics is mostly about compromise, there are times when compromise does not work.

This is not about whether we should lease or buy the buses; this is about dealing with the root cause of Thailand's predicament. If the Thaksin government's telecom policies, intertwined with the Shinawatras' own businesses, were considered a new type of corruption demon, this bus project is a ghost from the past.

And no matter how hard it is for Abhisit to get rid of it, he has to. Otherwise, his rise to power, already controversial as it is, may amount to nothing.