Even as the political crisis in Thailand descends into civil war it is important to remind ourselves that the simplest and most obvious of solutions is and always has been at hand. That solution has to do with one man, his money, and his jail sentence.

The Gordian solution to what has been made unnecessarily complex as some kind of deep-rooted social disease, is to give this man what he wants.

Give him the money. Withdraw the charges of corruption. Cancel his jail sentence.

Voila, the civil war will be over in a heartbeat. Many lives will be spared. The red shirts will go home. This beautiful mai pen rai country with its ever so intoxicating “live and let live”  style will then go back to being the kind of never-never-land that we have grown to love so much.