This perhaps is a golden opportunity for Premier Samak Sundaravej to establish his "real self" once and for all: to make a major, sweeping and thunderous Cabinet shake up.

If he has the guts to cause  that to happen, Samak will prove to the whole world (and I mean the whole world) that he is no surrogate of Thaksin Shinawatra. In other words, he can make his own real mistakes - and effect his own downfall, without help from any "invisible hand".

This is what both his staunch advocates and hard-core opponents may be wanting, for obviously different reasons: Samak will finally seize on this chance to dispel any doubts about his real political authority.

They will, I suspect, be sorely disappointed. Samak may talk rough and scream loudly, but his bite is anything but incisive. He may want to portray the picture of a devil-may-care veteran politician who has nothing more to lose.

But demonstrating political courage has never really been his forte.

His abrasive pronouncements are nothing but a veil to cover up a sense of insecurity. Very few political analysts may have picked it up, but two weeks ago, in his weekly television show, the premier made it clear he was standing on shaky ground.

Responding to criticism that he had taken too hasty a decision to allow sugar-cane millers to jack up the retail price, Samak said: "If I waited until the next cane harvest, that would have meant waiting until November. By then, the country's prime minister may not be called Samak Sundaravej."

And he didn't make it sound like a joke either.

Samak realises of course that he doesn't call the shots within the ruling People Power Party, no matter how often he declares, "I'm the boss here."

It's all too obvious that he is only a stand in. The party's spokesman has contradicted him publicly - to which he has reacted with uncharacteristic calm.

The party's executive members have gone ahead with their new Constitution draft without seeking his prior approval.

Samak's public instruction for a noisy and nasty pro-government rally has fallen on deaf ears.

It may be a paradox, but nothing serious really happened even when the prime minister delivered some extremely bad news about certain financial institutions.

Indeed, it says a lot about the premier's declining authority when there was no run on two banks said to have "gone bankrupt" by the country's chief executive in his television show. 

It is therefore unlikely that the premier will take the challenge to shake up his Cabinet now that a few ministers have placed themselves in such a vulnerable position that they could be legitimately replaced. For one thing, Sutha Chansaeng has quit as social development minister on grounds of ill health.

For another, at least two Cabinet members, Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsap and Deputy Commerce Minister Wiroon Techapaiboon, have been found to have failed to file reports on their shareholdings in private firms exceeding five per cent. While court rulings are pending, the question of ethical breaches hovers over their legitimacy.

If he can really gather all the guts he can muster, Samak may yet spring a surprise by pulling off a big reshuffle to install a new, more qualified Cabinet line-up, to replace the current one which, according to every public opinion poll so far, has failed the public miserably.

But I bet he won't have the nerve nor the sense of responsibility to live up to the public's expectations. He can't "touch" certain Cabinet members, known to be "appointed in his absence" by the ex-premier.

If you had really kept a close look, you would have noticed that Samak hasn't so far had much of a say in the work of main Cabinet members such as the two deputy prime ministers in charge of finance and commerce.

Neither can he rein in the "lightning rod" in his own Cabinet who has been plunging the government into one public relations controversy after another.

Even if he seriously wants to show all and sundry that he is really in charge and will pick his own men for his own government, the fact remains the key posts in his Cabinet are still "off-limits" for him.

And that inevitably means his days are numbered.