THE People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has arrived at a crucial crossroads: Should it turn into a political party - or should it continue to expand its influence as one of the country's leading pressure groups?

The PAD's five core leaders aren't exactly split right down the middle on the issue. But it's a dilemma of crucial proportions.

On the one hand, whatever the outcome of the treacherous process of arriving at a consensus, the PAD could face a serious rupture. But then, without a clear direction for the future, the yellow shirts could begin to lose political clout in the face of challenges posed by new, unidentified and complex political forces.

The PAD plans to hold a brainstorming session from May 24-25 to thrash out its do-or-die strategy. Each of the 76 provinces will be represented by ten PAD members. With a strong panel from headquarters numbering 100 or so personnel, the general assembly of about 1,000 activists will plot the grouping's critical next step.

The PAD's chief coordinator, Suriyasai Katasila, in a rare admission, said the proposed formation of a yellow-shirt political party had divided the movement.

"I have been asked whether we have finally decided to pursue political power instead of serving as a pressure group to educate and instigate for change in Thailand," he told a huge yellow-shirt crowd at last Saturday's "political concert" held in the southern commercial city of Hat Yai.

"I have also been told we won't be able to achieve our aim of new politics unless we turn ourselves into a political party to run in the election, so that we can have a decisive say in the national political process," he added.

Others have told Suriyasai that the PAD should devote less time and energy to Thaksin - and should instead concentrate on rebuilding the nation under their formula of "new politics".

That issue, too, represents the other dilemma facing the PAD: Is the movement all about getting rid of the former premier and the so-called "Thaksin regime?" Can the PAD really step away from what has been described as its obsession with Thaksin?

Some PAD leaders want to turn the group into a political party to raise the bar on its struggle to change the country's political structure. Public rallies and civil disobedience are only the first steps towards achieving that goal.

But even within the ranks of the PAD's leadership, there is a deep suspicion about being tainted with "political ambition". To keep the people's movement pure and virtuous, they argue, the PAD must remain a pressure group that keeps a clear and proper distance from electoral politics.

There is also the "third way" out of this Catch-22 situation. Some senior PAD members have floated the idea of a compromise: Let the main river flow into two branches, one morphing into a political party with the other maintaining the status of a popular movement.

That may sound like a typical happy medium. But the inherent danger is that such a halfway solution is no solution at all. In fact, there is a serious risk, if that proposal was to be taken up, that both the PAD party and the PAD pressure group would become equally wobbly and ineffectual and end up losing everything that represented the movement's original recipe of success.

When all is said and done, however, the final decision will rest with the five PAD leaders. They can't afford to split up and move the PAD in two different directions.

They even have a name for the new party: Prachabhiwat ("People's Reform"). But despite all the hoopla about the need to institutionalise the popular movement, my own analysis comes down to this:

The new party is too risky. The "middle way" is too divisive. The outcome of the brainstorming session will most likely end up with the "relaunching" of the PAD as a more pragmatic, conventional and result-oriented organisation.It's what you may call the PAD Part II, Chapter One.