On the surface, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej only wants to spend Bt2 billion to hold a "referendum" to find out whether the Thai people would say "yes" or "no" to the proposed constitutional amendments.

In fact, all he wants is a big "yes". But the bigger question is what's the "big yes" all about? You know and I know what he is really after. He won't publicly admit it. If he thinks we are all fools who would fall into the trap, then he isn't such a bright guy after all.

What Samak really wants is a political blank cheque. The gambit is incredibly simple: Wearing a democratic mask, you ask the people a stupid question to which there is only one answer and proceed to justify all the tricky manipulations you had drummed up before you cooked up the ploy in the first place.

Samak speaks at a press conference after the weekly Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The question that isn't a question at all is whether the current Constitution - or in fact, any constitution for that matter - could be rewritten to make it better serve the people. The real issue that has sparked the ongoing controversy that has prompted the PM to devise this new trap is the nation-wide suspicion that the ruling People Power Party (PPP) is trying to arm-twist the whole country into changing the constitutional rules to get themselves off the hook - and to absolve Thaksin Shinawatra, the ousted premier and his lieutenants, from all charges.

First, they tried to ram through a proposal to strike out Articles 237 and 309 with PPP's House majority. And when the public outcry became deafening, Samak beat a retreat, saying that he didn't quite agree with deleting Article 309, arguing that Thaksin was innocent enough to fight his own legal battle all the way to acquittal.

But soon, Samak discovered, to his own dismay, that he was a very small cog within the party. Instead of risking a life-threatening confrontation within the PPP, and at the same time taking on his growing number of critics, the prime minister chose to drag the whole country into this hopelessly superficial game called "referendum".

The scheme probably stemmed from his raw political instinct for survival rather than the result of any real in-depth strategic analysis. He soon found himself stuck in another dead-end. There is no legal tool with which to hold the referendum because organic law related to referenda has yet to be passed.

He immediately resorted to his raw political instinct again: No law? No problem. The premier will get the Cabinet to issue an emergency decree to legalise this move. Of course, he immediately ran into another round of severe criticism: Emergency decrees are supposed to meet real "emergencies" such as security issues or national disasters. Has Samak turned the amendments to the charter a "national emergency" too? Without putting it in so many words, the premier obviously had decided that his own political survival must now become a matter of national obsession.

No matter how ludicrous his proposed "please-save-me" referendum may sound, the grand plan's objective is to go through the motion to claim a "public mandate" to tear up the current Constitution and put into place a version that would save the PPP from being dissolved and pave the way for Thaksin to make a "whitewashed", triumphant, guilt-free return to power.

Samak has feigned great surprise over why so many people are against his idea to spend 2 billion baht of tax-payers' money only to get a "big yes" so that he could embark on his great scheme to clear up his party's own wrongdoings and to dispose of all corruption charges against the previous government.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with a referendum as long as the right question(s) are put forward so that the public gets a chance to have a real say about real issues.

Therefore, if the referendum is to be held, the question isn't whether the Charter should be amended or not. Rather, every eligible Thai should be given a chance to answer a set of questions, including:

Do you think Articles 237 and 309 should be amended or not?

Ask the people some real and smart questions - and you get some real answers.

Let the real debate begin.