Bangkok Post: Talk to each other while you still can

Prime Minister Yingluck, her brother Thaksin and action leader Suthep and his political supporters should end their deadly stalemate and start negotiating a solution. This urgent appeal is made by the editors-in-chief of Bangkok Post today in a comment posted (significantly) on the front page.

The newspaper states that the protagonists have no other choice. Yingluck can maintain her caretaker status as the 'guardian of democracy', but she apparently cannot rule. Suthep, meanwhile, can continue to obstruct the prime minister, but he has no legal or political means to force her to resign.

If the country remains in this endless crisis, it will only be at the expense of the country's future recovery and their fellow citizens will end up suffering the most.

Between Yingluck's emphasis on democratic esteem for general elections and Suthep's proposal for reform lies a range of possible solutions. Those solutions probably won't deliver what both sides want, but they will pull the country out of the swamp so it doesn't slide into a state of lawlessness.

Start talking now, while you still can. Control the hate before it leads to civil war. Act now, before it is too late Bangkok Post.

We don't negotiate or do we?

Action leader Suthep Thaugsuban was unyielding last night: he will never negotiate with Prime Minister Yingluck, he said. Even worse, he accused the prime minister of ordering her 'minions' (slave minions) to kill children. Suthep was referring to the two children who died in a grenade attack in Bangkok and the victims in Trat, where a second child died of her injuries yesterday afternoon.

According to Suthep, the only solution to the political crisis is the resignation of the Yingluck government. "The PDRC will continue to fight until the 'Thaksin regime' is nowhere to be seen in the country." Suthep asked his audience at Silom to wear black mourning clothes today.

In the meantime, the leadership of the protest movement seems to speak with two tongues, because protest leader Luang Pu Buddha Issara had a conversation on Tuesday with Somchai Wongsawat, brother-in-law of Thaksin, former prime minister and second on Pheu Thai's electoral list. The conversation was brokered by Election Council Commissioner Somchai Srisuthiyakorn. It took an hour.

“There are no requirements. Just exchanged ideas, devised procedures and selected participants in future rounds of talks,” he says. The core of the conversation was that both sides agree to create a negotiation process that will put an end to the crisis.

(Source: Bangkok Post, February 26, 2014 + website February 25, 2014)