And this bad economic news came hot on the heels of a nasty coincidence in the ongoing process to form a charter-drafting assembly.

When a little-known figure who received the most votes from fellow nominees to the Constitution Drafting Assembly allegedly happens to be a close buddy of the coup leader, the promised political reform gets off to the worst possible start. But a mixture of guarded criticism and straightforward booing will be nothing compared to what will surely come next if a crazy idea being mooted at present makes its way to the CDA's table.

Yes, we are talking about the "ghost" proposal - that the next prime minister doesn't necessarily have to come from the election. I call it a "ghost" because it seems to have come out of nowhere and every usual suspect appears to carry a disclaimer sign when approached by reporters. "The people will decide" has been a standard response, which has now started to sound unconvincing and scary.

We can only hope "The people will decide" doesn't in fact mean "Let's put it in the draft and see what happens in the public referendum". A constitutional clause legitimising a non-elected prime minister would be unlikely to make it that far.

If there's one single issue that can blow away the credibility of the interim leadership overnight, this is it. Such a provision would make the present stock market problems look like a storm in a teacup and turn other political bad guys into saints.

"Black Tuesday" sliced hundreds of billions of baht off the stock market's value. Countless investors, if not contemplating suicide, must have been in tears, ruing an alternative scenario if Thaksin Shinawatra & Co had still been in charge. The overthrown "new money" camp held stakes so huge in the market that implementing similar measures to cure the woes caused by the strong baht would have been sheer insanity.

The last thing this interim leadership needs is another battle front in the face of its biggest economic test.

No, it won't be another battle front; it will be a real war if the CDA takes up the non-elected prime minister idea. Champagne corks will be flying in London, coup advocates will hang themselves in shame and "Thailand, we told you so" will make editorial headlines across the globe. The Democrats will abandon their reluctant alliance with the military and the scattered Thai Rak Thai elements will be revitalised and converge with political activist groups to form a strong pro-democracy movement.

The coup leaders, the CDA members and the Surayud government only need look at what happened to the National Peacekeeping Council in 1992. It took just a few weeks for initially subdued anti-military sentiment to explode into a bloody uprising after NPKC leader Suchinda Kraprayoon took advantage of constitutional loopholes to become a non-elected prime minister following an election.

It could be argued that the NPKC, which overthrew the elected Chatichai government in 1991, was far less popular than the Council for National Security, as the leaders of the September 19 coup call themselves, and the NPKC showed no intent to reform Thai politics. But on the other hand, the 1992 "May Crisis" occurred despite the fact that Chatichai Choonhavan wasn't the most popular political leader in Thai history.

The NPKC was doomed when it was just fighting a pro-democracy movement alone. The CNS will be up against more sophisticated opponents, some of them very well financed. Most of all, the non-elected prime minister proposal will negate two of the four proclaimed goals of the coup makers - to bring about genuine political reform and to reunite a badly divided nation.

Prime Minister Surayud, who insisted that his non-elected status had been warranted by the country's snowballing political crisis, last week called on the media to give advice if post-coup rebuilding efforts seem to be veering off-track.

Here's my take: Whoever is behind the revival of this always acrimonious constitutional issue should be temporarily banished until the new charter is in place.

The proposal, if adopted, could become a time bomb. This "ghost" isn't worth playing with and should be locked up with all known spells available and buried as deep as possible.

Tulsathit Taptim