The telecom tycoon-turned-politician must have been so blinded by his arrogance of power that he failed to see there were limits to the Thai public’s seemingly boundless capacity for forgiveness.

The prime minister, once universally popular and who counted among his supporters a wide cross-section of the Thai population, must have thought he could get away with virtually any transgression, including obviously self-serving and morally repugnant ones, provided they were cloaked in legal and technical ambiguities.

Thaksin must have calculated cynically that any doubts about his personal integrity on the part of his gullible and attention-deficient supporters could simply be wiped clean the next time he doled out yet another populist perk.

He is now discovering that he could not have been more wrong about how far he could go in indulging in the incestuous relationship between political power and selfish interest. As it turned out, the clinching of the lucrative deal with Temasek was the final straw, with the PM exposed for the kind of leader he actually is and always has been.

It has become clear that being the most fabulously wealthy politician ever to have entered Thai politics did not make him less susceptible to corruption accusations after all. Alleged underhanded manipulation of government regulatory bodies and the use of shady business transactions to maximise family profits at the expense of the public interest also gave the lie to Thaksin’s pledge to put his business acumen at the service of the people. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place, the Shin Corp sell-off is now seen as the culmination of an unbroken string of corruption scandals occurring under Thaksin’s watch these five years he’s been in power.

To be fair, Thaksin’s oft-repeated claim that 19 million voters supported his Thai Rak Thai Party, and by extension his premiership, should not be rejected out of hand. It is not too difficult to see why Thaksin’s unparalleled powers of patronage should continue to enjoy relatively strong support among the poverty-stricken rural folk who form the core of his power base and are addicted to his populist brand of politics. But the support given to Thaksin and his party has now been counterbalanced to some extent by the growing ranks of urban middle class turning against him. Besides, electoral support must not be considered a licence to engage in the corrupt practices the Thaksin administration stands accused of.

And the growing anger and frustration of the politically powerful middle class and civil society should not be discounted. No democratically elected government in modern Thai history has ever faced similar widespread opposition from those quarters and survived. The latest and most notable example was the short-lived government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon, who was toppled only weeks after assuming power in a popular 1992 uprising, for his perceived lack of legitimacy to rule.

Faced with this potentially explosive challenge to his leadership, Thaksin has already deployed a series of delaying tactics, ranging from a vague proposal on constitutional amendments, consultation with academics and now an extraordinary parliamentary session to debate how his government can disentangle itself from this “political disturbance” of its own making.

It’s high time that Thaksin realised he has only two viable options left: resign or dissolve the House of Representatives to pave the way for a snap election. The prime minister’s miscalculation in several of his most recent moves has landed him in the worst crisis of his political career. He can ill afford any further misjudgement of this most volatile of situations.