Perhaps it's time to give Nelson Mandela a call. He's clean. He's got plenty of street cred, and he spent 26 years in prison, which is 25 more than any Thai politician in history.

We could invite him to run the place for a bit while we work on the new constitution. He'd probably advise bringing in the United Nations to take over the repairs and taxi service at Suvarnabhumi. Now there's a scam worth thinking about.

Meanwhile, millions of rural Thais think Thaksin should still be running the country because for them the only pertinent question is not whether he did anything wrong but whether is he still capable of doing his job. The fact he's not here is a minor consideration. What a radical step that would be if this method was introduced into all law. Judges would have to sum up by telling the jury: "The important thing you have to decide is not whether Mr Somchai did or didn't carry out the murder but whether he's still in good shape to drive the 38 bus from Bang Na to Klong Toey."

Thaksin is probably telling the truth when he claims he hasn't done anything wrong, because he's only following the ethos of his own world of Thaksinomics, in which valuable people are those who inhabit a world of property dealing, jobs for the tribe, club and classmates where you wangle Bt20 million worth of shares and don't even have to turn up. Thaksin seemed to think there was a law of physics that if a substance wasn't owned in part by the Thai Rak Thai, the substance would melt. It was a free market. But most of all, it was his market.

Just imagine if he'd stayed in power. We might have woken up one morning in 2017 to find that the Kingdom had been sold to Roman Abramovich and that a hairdresser in Korat had become prime minister on goal difference, the Fifth Cavalry Division had been sold on E-Bay and the Northeast was now called "Vodafone Isaan".

I wish Oriana Fallaci was still alive. As an interviewer she would have made mincemeat of our ousted prime minister.

***

But reconciliation is the mantra. We must be kinder to each other. Soon we'll see the first wave of more sensitive robberies, in which the gang shouts: "Everyone get on the floor, don't say a word, remember there are villages in Surin 50 miles from the nearest doctor, and put everything in this sack."

An ex-TRT contender for the PM post is mouthing platitudes about reconciliation because he "has to" in a gesture so excruciatingly self-serving, so transparently phoney, that even a teenager would have baulked at it. So, he's behaving like a teenager; anxiously waiting for his parents to leave - "Yes, of course I'll look after everything, of course I won't put the Skytrain fares up or banish the free-trade agreement." Then as soon as the election's round the corner he'll trash the place.

Still, great swathes of the population sincerely hope we eventually get a good - all right: decent - government and not one that is driven by three parts jealousy, two parts spite and six parts greed. Politics doesn't need any more criticism. God forbid. It needs invigorating. Something to remind us why we should bother to vote in the first place. And where are the Mrs Gandhis and the Segolene Royales of Thailand?

As in Thailand, voting is compulsory in Australia. In Queensland one voter had a massive hangover, didn't make it out of bed on election day and was fined 10 bucks, but a woman who refused to vote claiming "none of the bastards were worth voting for" wasn't fined anything, because the court couldn't find any fault with either her argument or her judgement.

***

Nine bombs, six weeks, a grainy photograph and a massive police force is starting to stretch the boundaries of both arithmetic and the imagination. To call it an "ongoing investigation" is stretching the boundaries of language.

***

Politicians everywhere are absolute masters at getting out of trouble but helpless at staying out of it. I wonder what goes on during those hearings at the Assets Examination Committee. Perhaps after seven hours of grilling the defendant says with exasperation: "Look, you can't expect me to check every bit of paper I sign for Bt690 million, I'm a busy guy. Talk to my secretary. I'm off to buy the Andaman Islands, and don't forget cocktails and prostitutes are free until midnight."

My favourite Russian of the week is Oleg Deripaska, 39, who is worth $21.2 billion. He owns Rusal, the second largest aluminium company in the world, as part of a business empire stretching from insurance and aircraft to God knows what. Like Mr Abramovich, Mr Deripaska has a big house in Belgravia. He learnt English by "flying his private jet to London each week for a year for lessons".

***

Quote of the week:

"Of course attacking Iraq has made us a target. You might as well argue the Japanese didn't make themselves a target when they bombed Pearl Harbor and the fact the Americans spent the next four years at war with them was just a coincidence." Mark Steel, The Independent.

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Headline of the Week: "Drunk Aussie Attacks a Shark" (BBC news online)

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A priceless and revealing report from Tom Coghlan in Lashkargar, Helmand province (Daily Telegraph).

"Afghan police recently stumbled on half a ton of opium after firing at a vehicle that ran a checkpoint. When the Afghan army arrived on the scene, the two sides fought a pitched gun battle for the drugs. A deal was struck, and 100kg eventually went to the police and 400kg to the army. When Western drugs officials heard of the incident and approached the Afghan army, 15kg of the drugs were handed back."

***

Sunday thought:

As a child caught up in the Bosnian war, Zlata Filipovic hit the headlines when she published her diaries in 1993. An extract: "I'm very bad at understanding human cruelty. I can't understand that a guy who likes fishing and Van Morrison in a small town in Bosnia can three months later be committing unmentionable cruelty."