What he has done, in the face of clear and present danger to his leadership, is simply an instinctive response - just running for your life, far away from the formidable threat. Never mind the denunciation by his critics that he was being chicken-hearted despite his habitual bravado.

This is his true nature. Thaksin would not engage his adversaries if he were not assured of comfortable advantage. Not even in a public debate, televised live or otherwise. What he prefers is a closed-room talk, like a four-eyed huddle, which is the norm for businesspeople negotiating shady deals.

His style of crisis management - running away from problems - is unlikely taught at Harvard Business School. It may be part of the course for the degree in criminal justice that he got from a little-known US university, but more likely such strategy is from the natural instinct of self-preservation.

For more than a week Thaksin has indulged in the pretence, with a considerable degree of self-deception, that the huge protest rally around Government House means nothing, that it represents merely an alliance of pipsqueaks - the broken-hearted and those disappointed about deals he did not grant them as part of his favours.

He has stayed away from his office for more than a week and chosen to bunker down at the Foreign Ministry complex instead, not caring that the public might form a negative perception of him. As long as he doesn't face the risk of being surrounded at Government House, things should seem fine to him.

More and more he has been in a state of denial, with obvious dysfunction of his sense of reality, about the fact that he is no longer needed as national leader in the eyes of educated urban people, who are wise to his tricks and demagoguery to fool the rural gullible and naïve.

Being away from Government House, he has come up with the lame excuse that he can manage affairs of state with his mobile phone. If that is true, maybe we Thais can get better use from mobile phones than put up with a runaway chief executive.

At least mobile phones are a means of communication and responsive. Thaksin on the contrary refuses to stay in contact with reality and the people who want to extract the truth about the shady Shin Corp sale. The entire world is laughing at us because of Thaksin's latest act of political clowning.

While away, Thaksin lets his minions and stooges in the capital engage in futile attempts to seek a solution to the longstanding political crisis. He knows that by staying away and letting his men keep his adversaries busy, he can buy time until the general election on April 2.

Thaksin does not care that all layers of respectable society are against him and don't want him to hold the top job for a day or even minutes longer. Further delay could harm the nation's political, economic and social structure.

His style of divide and rule was denounced jointly yesterday by two bodies governing journalists and lawyers - a most forceful and credible demand for him to quit immediately and face criminal investigation for a long string of wrongdoings in office.

But all these calls, demands and denunciations will fall on his deaf ears, just like before. Thaksin prefers quantitative rather than qualitative means of gauging his popularity. He has repeatedly scoffed at the urban protesters, numbering just tens of thousands, while declaring that 19 million voters carried him to Government House.

His daily pep rallies in the provinces to please grass-roots supporters with the spending of urban taxpayers' money serve as another devious strategy to claim the necessity of his extended national leadership. At one point he unabashedly asserted that without him at the top, the country would surely become a debtor of the International Monetary Fund again.

There was no plausible reason given to back this claim. He did not need to - Thaksin has been grudgingly recognised as a spin master and narrator of half-truths with the talent of a snake charmer in one-sided talk.

That's why he is afraid of a point-by-point public debate and is dodging open Q&A sessions, which fits in well with the characteristics of a man who has much to hide and high stakes to lose if all shady aspects of his business deals were exposed.

But how long can Thaksin assume the role of a runaway caretaker CEO? For as long as it keeps him safe from political peril, of course. This strategy might pay in the short run, but Thaksin cannot remain unaware that he has lost all credibility and public recognition as the country's leader.

What's more? He has been running away to the comfort and solace of rural grass-roots people because he just doesn't want to hear a revered but forceful whisper in his ear, similar to what Ferdinand Marcos heard from a US senator before he flew away into exile.

"Cut and cut cleanly!"

 Sopon Onkgara