When Bt76 billion is at stake, anybody's mood can be unstable. So, if his phone-in messages show Thaksin Shinawatra badly mixing up his Plan A and Plan B in a final battle to retrieve his frozen assets, we should understand why.
One minute he says he wants to "come home to die" and is ready to negotiate, though that "doesn't mean I'm getting desperate", the next minute he says he would "never seek mercy from enemies". It's up to us to determine which statement carries greater weight - his apparent wish to not return home in a bag of bones or his renewed resolve to go down fighting.
What is he really prepared to do? The answer can probably be found in the personal analyses of two men known to be very close to him - Payap Shinawatra and Pranpree Bahiddha-Nukara. They have their own thoughts on how the current crisis should be resolved and voiced them in exclusive interviews with The Nation. Though they have both firmly insisted that they were by no means conveying what Thaksin has in mind at the moment, the two men's ideas were strikingly similar.
Both had their own way of saying it, but simply put, they believe that the best way to put everything to rest is to give Thaksin back some of the money and some of his dignity, so he can bow out from politics permanently.
Payap and Pranpree have no illusion as to whether Thaksin should return to the political field. Yet they believe that while things have gone way too far for him, the national divide has also reached a point where a compromise needs to be struck and where seizing all his assets will never lead to peace.
The question is how does one find a magical middle ground that will please Thaksin, save the face of the military that toppled him for alleged massive graft, will not upset the yellow shirts and can be explicable legally, morally and constitutionally.
But first we need to find out what Thaksin's bottom line is. Will returning a part of his frozen assets do the trick?
Maybe, if that comes with a graceful legal exit for Thaksin regarding his two-year jail sentence over the Ratchadaphisek land scandal. From what we've gathered from sources close to him, Thaksin can't bear to spend a single day in jail, which likely means that he is ready to embrace some kind of conditional amnesty - one that would require him to do honourable public service.
That could be Thaksin's last stand, or his close aides have no idea and the former prime minister has no intention of giving away any part of "his" assets. In that case, perhaps his proclaimed plan to take the issue to an international court is not just an empty threat.
On the government's side, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and other top government leaders have reiterated, publicly at least, that no negotiation "with a convict" is possible. The sources close to Thaksin were not surprised by this, saying the Democrats and other "enemies" of Thaksin would not feel the urge to start talking truce as long as they have the upper hand.
"Talks can only begin when both sides conclude that continuing to fight would not bring any advantage," one of the sources said.
There is no need to translate that into whether Thaksin feels he is at an advantage or a disadvantage. What's more difficult is to predict which sort of underdog Thaksin will show up each day - the gloomy one who doesn't want to die a lonely death overseas, or the belligerent one who is too proud to beg for mercy.
