BANGKOK –The People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has announced that next month it will once again release highly inflated estimates of the number of people attending its protests in an attempt to overthrow the government and bring democracy to the country.

At a press conference at Sondhi Limthongkul’s Phra Athit headquarters, the group said that it would step up its efforts with new estimates that included not only everyone living and working within five kilometers of the protest site but also “reporters, security personnel, and curious farang onlookers.”

A proposal to include workers erecting and dismantling the stage and street sweepers cleaning up after the protest was voted down “for now.”

“But if democracy is not restored soon, we will not let the marginal and accidental presence of these people be ignored,” threatened PAD coordinator Suriyasai Katasila.

Sondhi Limthongkul, head of Manager Media Group and self-proclaimed journalist, said his publications would then further inflate the figures through massive front-page headlines and “a cleverly framed photo that appeared to make the crowd seemed larger than it really was.” 

“By the next day a gathering of a few hundred people will seem like millions,” said Sondhi. “Because very few people actually join these protests, no one knows we are just making this shit up,” he said.

The threats have rattled the government, which believes that inflated protest numbers in 2006 were key to substantiating the fictional division in Thai society that led to an actual coup.

Sondhi did nothing to dispel that argument yesterday. “In Thailand, the appearance of a popular movement is more effective than a real, popular movement,” he said. “After all, a real, popular movement would be messy and actually require giving power to the people. But a fictional popular movement allows certain powerful people to intervene on behalf of the country in the name of people who don’t exist.”

“And it sells papers,” he added.