Love is just like a merry-go-round
With all the fun in the air
One day I’m feeling down on the ground
Then I’m up in the air
Are you leading me on?
Tomorrow will you be gone?

I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string

I may win on the roundabout
Then I’ll lose on the swings
In or out, there is never a doubt
Just who’s pulling the strings
I’m all tied up to you
But where’s it leading me to?

Suddenly October 2007 is looking a very long way off. Thailand’s increasingly incompetent puppet regime must be starting to count the days, wondering how many more bungles it can endure before a constitution is finalised and an election held. If the September 19 coup seemed like a triumph for the royalist-technocrats in their longstanding battle with the “electocrats” (a term I am borrowing from Kasian), then the months that have followed have shown just how fleeting victory can be. A series of high profile bungles, accompanied by some simply preposterous public statements (especially those in relation to the Bangkok bombings) have brought the junta-puppet honeymoon to an abrupt end. In the wake of the Somkid debacle, even the yellow-trimmed rhetoric of sufficiency economy is starting to look a little tawdry.

One can only wonder if this troubled government can survive until an election is held. Whatever happens, the electocrats must be rubbing their hands in glee at the growing public and media disillusionment with the royalist white knights.