PM's Office Minister Satit Wongnongtoey is sincere and logical about what his ruling party should fear most. Curiously, it is not a coup or Thaksin Shinawatra's red shirts. Of all the issues facing the Democrat Party, he said, there was only one it had no control over whatsoever. The biggest potential timebomb is none other than the campaign contribution scandal, which could ultimately see the party punished by dissolution.
"When this case is concerned, we can't control anything and we can't predict anything," he told The Nation in an exclusive interview on Friday.
Critics may argue he overlooked the gossip about good relations between the Election Commission chairman and his party.
Election Commission chief Apichart Sukhagganond has been criticised by some for what they claim is a lack of significant progress. Only a few days ago he said a review of the case, in which the Democrat Party was accused of having unlawfully received a donation of Bt258 million from TPI Polene, could not be concluded before the end of February.
Apichart, the political party registrar, said the working committee he assigned to review the case had yet to find enough evidence so it would not able to resolve the matter next month.
While Satit's failure to refer to Apichart was glaring, the proclaimed biggest concern of the ruling party may be genuine. The most coalition allies can do is cause the House to be dissolved. Threats violence on the streets by the red shirts are a shared responsibility of the government and armed forces.
And according to Satit, the Democrats aren't worried about a coup. "Our party's relationship with the military is not so good historically. But if there ever was a time when the two institutions were perceived to be closer than now, I don't know when it was," he said.
And a coup could cause even less ramifications than the Democrats being dissolved, which would force party executives to leave politics for five years.
Indeed, the real crippling blow to Thaksin's parliamentary dominance was not the coup that deposed him, but a series of court rulings after he was ousted.
The second biggest threat, Satit admitted, was continuing problems with their coalition allies. It seems that conflicts over charter amendments are unlikely to be forgotten easily, so it depends on whether this seed of instability grows. In other words, the Democrats realise this "disagreement" could morph into disunity.
"When differences of opinions develop into something that threatens co-existence, that's a cause for concern," Satit said.
The third biggest threat was "external factors" taking advantage of internal problems. That is why, he said, the Democrat-led government should be very sensitive about corruption scandals. The red shirts were a cause of anxiety, but could grow into a more fearsome force if the government's legitimacy was undermined by issues like corruption.
Satit discounted alleged "disunity" within his own party, which he said had a long tradition of coping democratically with differences of opinions. "Even members of any family can't always agree on which movie to go to, so you can't expect politicians to always agree on everything," he said. "It's the way you handle the differences that count."
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