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General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the man who led the September 19, 2006 coup, has officially announced that he is now the leader of the newly set up Matubhum Party. While taking on the new post, the former Army chief promised to serve the country with his heart and soul, saying that he was ready to fight all battles.

Unlike other party leaders, Sonthi has made the insurgency in Thailand's deep South one of his party's top priorities, mainly because most of the politicians under his wing hail from there.

Now that's not to say that other political parties have been ignoring the South, it's just that they don't make it a campaign issue, because they know the subject will not score them any political points. After all, the voters are not interested in hearing any more about rights and cultural differences, much less historical grievances of the Malays in the Patani region.

So should Sonthi be given credit for promising to tackle a difficult task?

We think not, at least not until we hear what the Matubhum Party has planned for the restive region, where nearly 4,000 people have been killed since January 2004.

However, it is strange to see this man make the deep South his political platform, especially since he did very little good for the region during his watch as Army chief.

His approach and tactics were at loggerheads with the reconciliatory tone of the then-prime minister Surayud Chulanont, who apologised for the past atrocities committed against the people of Patani, specifically the Tak Bai massacre.

While Surayud kept apologising to the Malays of Patani, Sonthi kept demanding that the militants reciprocate. And when they didn't, he sent off troops that did more harm than good.

In 2007, hundreds of young men from highly contested areas were rounded up and sent to army camps in the upper South for what he called "job training". Later that year, a court stepped in and declared the project unconstitutional because the men had been sent, against their will, to what appeared more like "re-education camps".

Sonthi said that though he has not meddled in politics ever since he retired, he thinks he will make a good party chief because, after all, he has been providing advice to politicians.

He said his Matubhum or "Motherland" Party, would be able to work with the Pheu Thai Party, which is a proxy of Thaksin Shinawatra - the very man that Sonthi overthrew in a bloodless coup in 2006 while serving the country as Army commander-in-chief.

However, only time will tell whether he is just being open-minded or if he's seeking refuge under somebody's wing for the sake of political survival.