The talks between the government and the red-shirt leaders, watched by the entire nation on television on Sunday and Monday, were not real negotiations but more like a mushy story of love gone wrong, in which the main characters come out to make the other side look bad.
Though Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva tried to present himself as a humble leader, he was hardly eating humble pie when he called red-shirt leader Veera Musigapong "brother". They smiled at each other as if they were brothers with no conflicts.
'WE ARE THE SAME'
Veera tried to befriend the youthful premier by saying: "We are the same, we are all victims of the military coup."
"Not exactly," Abhisit should have said, before he began justifying the 2006 military coup, the junta-sponsored Constitution and his government that took the power in accordance with the Constitution.
Instead, he implied: "If there was no Thaksin, there would have been no coup."
Meanwhile, Veera presented himself as an old man who had gone through many battles for democracy. Well, at least he did not try to compete with the prime minister's good looks. Instead, he spoke in a low tone, almost prayer-like, when he argued that lovers of democracy and democratic politics should never accept a coup.
As the Oxford-educated Abhisit continued lecturing about the philosophy of democracy, Jatuporn Promphan, another red-shirt leader, decided to fight back like a pit bull, breaking up the philosophical debate and dragging the negotiators back to the real issue.
"We are here to talk about the dissolution of Parliament. If the government will not accept this, should we all stop now and go our different ways?" he said.
Jatuporn went straight to the point he had adopted from his mentor - that the dissolution |of Parliament was the only solution.
People keep saying that Jatuporn is fighting for former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, but in actual fact, this red-shirt leader is no stranger to the fight for democracy.
He started fighting for the principle from the uprising against the military in May 1992. Yet, as he says, he has nothing more than a Toyota Fortuner to show for his decades in the political field.
Of course, few people doubt who sent Jatuporn the SMS when he decided to end the negotiations on Monday, despite the fact that he insisted: "That was my colleague Natthawut Saikua, at the rally site, who whispered for me to stop the talks."
JUST TO 'BOTHER ABHISIT'
Jatuporn, who is also known as Tu, said he never believed the televised negotiations would bring the red shirts any closer to the goal, but that he had agreed to sit in just to bother Abhisit. That's probably why he turned the second day of the dialogue into a censure motion against the prime minister and nearly managed to make Abhisit lose control on Monday before his senior colleague Weng Tojirakarn intervened.
However, ex-communist and physician Weng took the talks no closer to an end by bringing up Mao Zedong's class analysis. Several viewers admitted they had no idea what Weng was talking about, and now his name has become slang for "lost". Apparently, if Weng is pronounced as "Veng", it means lost in the Khmer language.
Yet, Weng did not seem that lost when he concluded his discourse by saying, "dissolve the Parliament, please".
The opposing side's Weng should have been Democrat MP Chamni Sakdiset, who chose instead to remain invisible.
The most honest speaker in the show was Korbsak Sabhavasu from the government camp. Though he spoke less than the other five men present, he hit the point every time. Sadly, nobody paid attention.
Korbsak, who has been on good terms with Veera for a long time, is perhaps the only man who still hopes that such political talks can yield some results.
After all, he was the only one who said: "You don't believe me and I don't believe you, but we should not throw anything away. Let's continue."
