If you start with "Prime Minister" Yingluck and she becomes "caretaker Prime Minister" Yingluck who turns into "acting caretaker Prime Minister" Niwattumrong, what is the person after him called?
Gen Prayuth.
The army commander, x, was the victim of that satire. Er, it was satire, right? He is not going to be interim prime minister, right?
Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha (Photo by Pornprom Satrabhaya)
Good question. Gen Prayuth had a lot on his mind and didn’t mind being testy about it at all. He switched from "of course there will be no coup" into a different persona after 3am drive-by killers in a white pickup murdered three people and wounded 22 at the Democracy Monument.
Grim and angry, the general was. Mobs and villains should now expect him to bring down "the full force of the military" if there is further bloodshed. He has never before been so explicit.
His anger was clearly genuine. After the horrible sight of the spilt blood of three dead People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) guards and protesters, and the wounded.
The Kamnan previously known as Suthep Thaugsuban left the investigation and follow-up of the atrocity to police and Gen Prayuth. His mob was almost silent all week, after moving out of Lumpini park to Ratchadamnoen and the date with the drive-by killers.
When they left Lumpini, the mob left behind a stunning cache of weapons - rifles, handguns, pipe bombs, ammunition and material to make other explosives. Police picked it all up and laid it out on a table for the media to see. It wasn't clear why the mob, presumably the guard force, accumulated such a cache without really using any of it. Having to leave it behind on a daylight march out of Lumpini must have hurt.
The Kamnan was almost a non-entity. Almost. But on Thursday, he and more than 100 whistleblowers broke up a meeting at a Royal Thai Air Force club with words that deserve a place in the history books: "I have come to have lunch." And he was allowed in.
That sent the acting caretaker prime minister scrambling out an alternative exit, a familiar scene over the past seven years. Within hours, the Election Commission (EC) official in charge of voting administration, Somchai Srisuthiyakorn, announced that the chances of a July 20 poll were now effectively over.
He set a new standard for the polls: Unless the opposition (that is, the mob) agrees to participate, there probably can't be an election at all.
The meaningful action of the week took place at the Senate. Yes, yes that's correct, a small clutch of oldish men in suits grabbed the public's focus of attention from a mob that had been hogging the spotlight for six solid months.
The short version is this.
The anti-government, anti-Thaksin appointed senator Surachai Liangboonlertchai, now the speaker of the upper house, artfully and carefully played backroom politics with back-stabbing and arm-twisting and within days had a lot of senators, possibly a majority, agreeing with a principle never before heard in Thai politics, let alone adopted.
Mr Surachai claims that since there is no parliament and no obvious way out of deadlock, the senate has the right to remove the government, name and appoint an interim prime minister, and commence to run the country just as though it had gone through an election. It's a question of interpreting the constitution, not abrogating it as in all past coups.
Of course, like every other proposal from elections to military coups, about half the people agree and half disagree. The difference with Mr Surachai and his senate colleagues is that they may have the glossy paint to cover up the flaws and actually make their proposal acceptable to, say, the Constitutional Court.
Then there was the Centre for the Administration of Peace and Order (Capo). Its director Chalerm Yubamrung announced the mob leaders, including the Kamnan himself, would soon be arrested. The Criminal Court approved another 30 arrest warrants covering pretty well the entire PDRC leadership, including the monk (Luang Pu Buddha Isara).
The only problem was that after days of suspense, no one was arrested. The Capo announced it had deployed 158 police companies, many with military support, to guard the people. Mr Chalerm announced the Senate had better not appoint an interim prime minister, or else. Mr Chalerm announced that unless the EC commissioned an election, he would jail them. Etc, etc.
Shakespeare of course had this one covered in the Macbeth speech describing a statement "full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."
Finally, there are the red shirts. They were, probably momentarily, semi-isolated by their own choice in extreme western Bangkok alongside the Utthayan Road khlong, bothering no one and heartily self-congratulating each other. All week they were energised and angry, organised and eager. They said they were eager for elections, but their energy and anger screamed about the Kamnan, the senators and the general.
Red shirt protesters rally in Nakhon Pathom's Buddha Monthon district. (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)
Jatuporn Prompan, the red shirt icon who is the official leader of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), was calling at press time for major rallies from last night until Monday. "The situation is reaching breaking point sooner than we expected," he said. He put Sen Surachai and Gen Prayuth into the same basket of "enemies of the nation" as the Kamnan.
The red shirt rally in Nakhon Pathom's Buddha Monthon district took on an extremely edgy tone on Thursday night. (The red shirts only rally after sunset.)
The big sign on the stage changed from "Democracy" to "Fight for Democracy", with graphic artists’ renditions of the 2010 violence. At the nightly sing-along, actors depicting four red-clad Thai warriors from the Ayutthaya era were added to each side of the stage line, clutching their swords in over-acted determination. The "please walk on these yellow shirts" photo collage placed on Utthayan Road had a small queue of people waiting for the privilege.
If the Senate or the army or the PDRC succeed in removing acting caretaker Prime Minister Niwattumrong, or if another "interim" premier is named, or both, simply press the red button to recycle. It is not a prediction that UDD protesters will replace PDRC protesters on the streets of central Bangkok, but a statement of fact. The question is, how violent will it get?