Apart from seeking friendship and cooperation through letters, his new strategy includes seeking understanding, beseeching sympathy, moaning and whining with hard-luck tales about his political adventure.

Or should we say he has added clowning to international diplomacy?

The contents of his letter to US President George W Bush could mean anything, but it was not a wise move. No matter how desperate the situation he was in, Thaksin should not have let the world know that he could not take care of himself, thus showing himself to be unfit to take charge of Thailand as caretaker prime minister.

From bravado to whining, the letter to Bush portrays Thaksin as a politician with many streaks in his character and a complex personality. Dr Prawes Wasi, once a staunch supporter of the fast-mouthed billionaire and now a vocal critic, described the man's symptoms as those of someone with an affected "amygdala", which has something to do with emotional reactions.

Those interested in the symptoms can find more details through Google. It sounds depressing enough. Whether Dr Prawes' diagnosis is accurate or otherwise should be left to a panel of qualified shrinks. If there exist such symptoms, or other kinds of mental disorder, there must be preventive measures to pre-empt possible risks arising from acts of insanity.

Surely, we cannot rule out other possible symptoms awaiting further psychiatric analysis. A man of many traits and complex character must not be assessed lightly after all the strange acts that people had to bear with all through the past five years.

A lot has been said and criticised about Thaksin's new style of diplomacy, including coffee sessions for whining in person, as experienced by the leaders of nations in the UN Security Council. We have to admire the guy's gall in spilling convincing half-truths and great lies to those who genuinely cared enough to lend their ears to his tales of woes.

Certainly, we are quite sure that such a tactic was not derived from Thaksin's own ideas. It bears the brash and reckless style of his chief political adviser, whose freak ideas and high-handed schemes triggered a bloodless military coup to topple the government of General Chatichai Chonhavan in 1991.

It is not the first time for Thaksin to heed peculiar advice and undertake bold action, eventually either shooting himself in the foot or ending up an international buffoon with gales of laughter all around him. Of course, those involved in the entire letter exercise must have believed that nobody else would learn about it and they would get away with the blame game.

Thais in the know are furious, of course. By putting the whole country to great shame, Thaksin's unpredictable conduct has gone too far. The people do not care if the caretaker government leader wished to make a fool of himself, but he had no right to drag all of us on stage to be laughed at like clowns.

That's why the pro-democracy alliance took the trouble of drafting letters in Thai, Chinese and English to the embassies of the superpower nations in Bangkok to refute Thaksin's allegations and at the same time explain what had happened and why there were street demonstrations to oust him from office.

Actually there was no need to provide an explanation. Foreign governments must already know through periodic reports from their embassies about what's going on here and who is really the bad guy in the protracted political crisis.

What's more, Thaksin must have been confident - truly or through self-deception - that his letters were more impressive and bore more credibility than these embassy reports.

In his radio chat on Saturday morning, he spent several minutes defending his controversial letters. Unrepentant as always, Thaksin blamed everybody else for his troubles and the endless pressure to eject him from Government House.

The naïve and gullible, without knowing his track record, might have burst in tears. The soft sell and spin mixed with pleas still carried considerable spell.

By now, he should realise that his worst enemy is his loose tongue and unlimited potential to create more enemies. Another point of controversy over his letter was that it omitted to say "Kingdom of Thailand" after his "Prime Minister" title, which itself was not preceded by the word "caretaker" to explain his precise status.

This unfortunately gave his critics and adversaries material for jokes. They suspected that maybe he wanted to establish a "Thaksindom", or, as The Economist once wondered, whether Thailand actually had a "tycoon" or "Thaicon" as leader. In current circumstances, it might be quite appropriate to describe Thaksindom as "Condom".

Sopon Onkgara