The onset of an economic slowdown, made worse by the long drawn out political crisis of his own making, now threatens to erode the support of the rural masses, from which his Thai Rak Thai Party derives its legitimacy to rule. It became obvious to a beleaguered Thaksin that unless he did something dramatic to shore up his credibility as a national leader, albeit a disgraced one, his political survival could not be assured. And so he did.

On Thursday, Thaksin dropped a bombshell, telling a group of top bureaucrats of a conspiracy to oust him through undemocratic means. He hinted that a group of people and organisations led by a "charismatic person" had been manipulating the volatile political situation in order to find a pretext to remove him from power.

In his hour-long speech, the caretaker prime minister described himself as a defender of democracy and attacked his opponents, whom he accused of not playing by the rules. As expected, his strongly worded statements were widely publicised in newspapers the next day, even though they were delivered in a closed-door meeting. People who tried to read Thaksin's intentions did not have to look far to make sense of his paranoid utterance.

Thaksin came to power five and a half years ago on a populist policy platform that pandered to the principal wants and needs of the people, especially poverty-stricken rural masses. He then portrayed himself as a tenacious CEO-style leader who got things done and delivered on his promises - on condition of unquestioned obedience from the public.

Instead of serving people honestly as he had vowed to do the prime minister, whose Thai Rak Thai Party had an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives, proceeded to consolidate his power, roll back civil liberties, intimidate critics, manipulate democratic institutions and indulge in an incestuous relationship between government power and personal gain. His government was tarnished by numerous corruption scandals and his anti-democratic tendency turned a lot of people off, including the urban middle class and members of civil society who played an important part in the Thai Rak Thai Party's meteoric rise. Thaksin's excesses culminated in the Shin Corp sell-off by his and his wife's families for tax-free proceeds of more than Bt73 billion in a lucrative, politically connected deal made with Singapore's Temasek Holdings. This showed his true colours.

Such blatant conflict of interest was the last straw. Thaksin's credibility as a national leader has since taken a plunge, triggering unprecedented massive protests in Bangkok against a democratically elected government gone awry. The mostly middle-class protesters, numbering hundreds of thousands, sought Thaksin's ouster, citing widespread corruption and his authoritarian traits.

The anti-Thaksin campaign, which had been suspended in the run-up to the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of His Majesty the King's accession to the throne last month, has now resumed. In a way, Thaksin's suspicion that there are people out there who want to see him go is not too far off the mark. But for Thaksin to make a wild accusation that some people are trying to remove him from power through undemocratic means is preposterous and exposes himself as a desperate politician who got cornered in his own game.

Thaksin, the populist demagogue, is raving and ranting about the unfairness of it all now the tide has turned against him. Let's not forget that in a democracy the government is put in power with the consent of the people and on the condition that it serve its stated purpose to protect the people's individual rights and work for the public good. Thaksin's government has failed utterly on all counts, and more and more people are being made aware of the fact. The Thai Rak Thai leader is running out of time and options after having squandered political legitimacy and public trust. And he has only himself to blame.