Perhaps he thought he could get away with paying scant attention to what he promised in writing when he decided to "take a break from politics" as and when it suited him. But the official letter, signed by Cabinet secretary-general Borwornsak Uwanno and dated April 7, may prove to be his undoing. Vanity has always been his Achilles' heel.

Several lawsuits filed with the Administrative Court have asked for Thaksin's dismissal retroactive to April 5, when he signed an order making one of his deputies, Chidchai Vanasatidya, acting premier. The "smoking gun" in this case is the official April 7 letter signed by the Cabinet secretary-general. It said the premier, "not having taken any rest for the past five years and for the sake of national reconciliation to avoid suspicion among some people", had decided to take leave from work as prime minister, in accordance with Article 215, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution "until such time as a new Cabinet takes office".

Thaksin's style has always been to shoot first and ask questions later. All he was concerned with when he announced his "holiday" was to cool the rising political heat from the growing mass protests against his rule. It was left to his underlings to find the legal buffer with which to cushion his political decision. In other words, legality was only an afterthought. Legitimacy was even less of a worry to him - it was at best one step behind any concern for legality. And now, that habitual slapdash attitude towards everything that does not benefit him personally has come back to haunt him.

Several public-law experts have pointed out that when Thaksin decided to dissolve Parliament on February 24 and call the April 2 snap election (since nullified by a court ruling), the Cabinet was automatically put out of office, as well. But in accordance with Article 215, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the Cabinet would be put in a "caretaker capacity" until a new one could be sworn in.

Thaksin obviously did not realise that when he decided to submit his request for leave on April 5 "until such time as a new Cabinet takes office", he was practically saying he would not be serving as caretaker prime minister. For all intents and purposes, it was definitely not a request for a holiday - in which case, a clear duration would have been specified, and that tell-tale "until such time as a new Cabinet takes office" clause would not have been stipulated in the first place.

The law experts want the court to rule that Thaksin's premiership ended the moment he submitted his April 5 request for leave and his secretary-general's official letter had circulated to all ministries, provincial administrations and foreign embassies, confirming his change in status - which, according to the complainants, is legally irreversible.

Thaksin's spokesmen have countered that the intention was only for a short break and that the political situation had since changed dramatically. Besides, they argued that with a new election scheduled for late October, the magnitude of the country's ongoing economic and social problems demanded that Thaksin be back in his office immediately. To the critics, of course, that's pure political trash talk - any excuse for Thaksin to go back on his word and seize the first opportunity to return to Government House to direct the Thai Rak Thai Party's next election campaign.

Thaksin's first day back on the job confirmed his detractors' worst fear: he presided over a Cabinet meeting that issued 14 resolutions, mostly of a "populist" nature, allocating budgets for various schemes that were aimed basically at propping up the government's - read Thai Rak Thai's - popularity.

The political conundrum here is: if Thaksin's premiership did indeed terminate on April 5 - and irreversibly so, legally - then his Cabinet's status since then would also be called into question constitutionally. Even trickier: all of the Cabinet's decisions since that date would therefore also be legally questionable. If this is the case, then there is an urgent need to rule on the constitutionality of Thaksin's current political status.

As it is, the country has already been thrown into a huge political shambles. We can ill afford another Thaksin-engineered political cataclysm.

Suthichai Yoon