BANGKOK – Police Col. King Kwaengwisatchaicharn, head of the team investigating the assassination attempt on Sondhi Limthongkul, said he had whittled the list of suspects to a little under one third of the Thai population.
The new estimate of 19,673,298 suspects is slightly lower than the 24,120,939 mentioned by police earlier in the day.
“We took a hard look at the list again,” said King at a press conference, “and realized that we had included several hundred thousand infants and toddlers, who have the requisite reasoning skills to see through Sondhi’s posturing and manipulation and thus potentially have motive, but who do not yet have the motor skills to fire automatic weapons.”
“We also removed some generals and policemen who, uh, were never supposed to be on the list,” he said.
King said he had been inundated with leads since the assassination attempt. “Every time I get the list down under 15 million it spikes back up again,” he said. “It is incredible how many people wanted to kill this guy.”
While the primary speculation surrounds fugitive prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, King said police would have to consider all the angles, “all several hundred thousand of them.”
“Look, it’s a tricky case. We’re in a hall of mirrors here. We have been fielding death threats against Sondhi since 1981, long before Thaksin was even around. The fact is half the people in this room probably wished Sondhi dead at some point,” said King to nervous laughs.
“The rest of us are just shaking our heads at the incompetence of the gunmen,” he said.
An ABAC poll released today confirmed King’s assessment. It states that 67% of Thais believe the assassination attempt was “faked” while the remaining 33% say they no longer believe in reality of any sort any more. Asked if they would have been more saddened by the successful assassination of Thaksin (allegedly plotted three years ago) or the successful assassination of Sondhi (allegedly plotted yesterday), 100% shrugged.
