In Bangkok
THE conference room in media baron Sondhi Limthongkul's Phra Athit road headquarters was packed with journalists and overflowing. Sondhi arrived at 12.30pm, and seated himself at the head of the table flanked by four co-leaders of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) – Suriyasai Katasila, Chamlong Srimuang, Piphob Thongchai and Somsak Kosaisuk.
He began speaking in a subdued voice, but soon it was clear he was his feisty self despite having taken a bullet in the skull in an assassination attempt just over two weeks ago, in which his car was riddled with bullets. A scar was visible on the side of his head where the bullet had lodged in his skull. Otherwise he looked remarkably fit.
"I don't go out very often, and I don't go out to the places I used to go" he said. "My life changed completely, this is a fact I have accepted," he said.
He said the "gunmen are still roaming around" but then added "my sources tell me four of the gunmen have already been silenced...(got) rid of."
He said: "The Thai military in a sense operates very much like the Cosa Nostra organisation." The Cosa Nostra is the Sicilian mafia.
Photo by: Nick Nostitz
"But I'm not blaming the whole military organisation, I'm blaming just a few bad apples," he said.
"Generally the majority of the Thai armed forces are still decent people, professional soldiers, only a few are addicted to political ambition, business interests, and personal ambition."
After the press conference in which he spoke mostly in Thai, he came out and took questions from the half dozen foreign journalists there.
I asked him to clarify a remark made to the daily The Nation in an interview published on Saturday, and he said "The red shirts and the yellow shirts share the same thing. They need change. The only difference between red and yellow is that when there's a change we believe that change will have to incorporate the monarchy institution. This is where we are different from the red shirts."
Photo by: Nick Nostitz
Red is the colour of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) whose rallying point is former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Yellow is the colour of the King – and the chosen colour of the royalist PAD.
Photographer Nick Nostitz asked if it was possible that some day there may be collaboration between the red shirts and yellow shirts, to which he replied: "That is a good question."
"The yellows and the reds are seeking something very similar which is change. The only difference is once that change is over, once we have achieved that change, how to go about our new politics, that's the difference between the yellow and the red. Because the reds are basically doing everything for Mr Thaksin, whereas we are doing everything for the whole country."
Eunice Lau of Al Jazeera asked whether he would consider a political career, to which he replied "No way."
See the full report on the press conference – his first since the assassination attempt – in The Straits Times tomorrow.