BY MID-AFTERNOON on December 9th, the leader of Thailand’s would-be revolution, Suthep Thaugsuban, was celebrating the capture of Bangkok’s government district from atop one of his supporters’ makeshift stages. Before him lay the prime minister’s office, shuttered and apparently empty, completely surrounded by over 100,000 of Mr Suthep's devoted followers. A few forlorn-looking soldiers were keeping guard at the gates; as agreed beforehand the protesters had not (yet) breached the perimeter. After a month of mounting protests, Mr Suthep had asked for a big turn-out for one last push to get rid of what he calls the “Thaksin regime”, and it seems that he got it. The fiery Mr Suthep seemed intoxicated by it all. Whether he is any nearer to uprooting the Thaksin regime, however, is a different matter. Even before the thousands of protesters set off to occupy the government quarter this morning, the embattled prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra (pictured), had taken the wind out of their sails by announcing that she was dissolving parliament and calling an election for February 2nd. As she said in a televised address, “Let the people decide the direction of the country and who the governing majority will be.”

In doing so she would appear to have given ground to the protesters, continuing her general policy of political appeasement. After all, she was elected with a large majority in parliament only two-and-a-half years ago—yet has now been forced to go back to the voters. But in fact calling a new election was always going to be her best move, as her Pheu Thai party is justifiably confident of winning. After all, the Pheu Thai party, or earlier incarnations of the party under the leadership of the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Ms Yingluck’s elder brother, have won all five general elections since 2001, and often by a big margin.

For however huge the crowds were in Bangkok today, they are certainly not an accurate indication of the mood across the whole of Thailand. The capital has always been a stronghold of the opposition Democrat Party. Out in the rural north, it’s a very different story. There Mr Thaksin and his party long ago captured the votes of the millions of relatively poor rice farmers, and they have been stacking up the parliamentary majorities for Mr Thaksin and his designated successors ever since. The opposition Democrat Party, by contrast, has a dismal record at the polls. It has never won an outright parliamentary majority in its long history, and last managed to cobble together a ruling parliamentary government after an election in the late 1990s.

Thus it’s elections that the opposition really fear, and that was evident today. On the streets Mr Suthep’s supporters, well aware of the electoral history and arithmetic, certainly weren’t celebrating Ms Yingluck’s decision to “let the people” decide what the government should be. For they know exactly what the people will decide—very likely more of the same.

Mr Suthep’s motley crew of acolytes and cheerleaders try to argue that somehow all of Mr Thaksin’s victories (in the various party guises) have been “bought” and that voters have been “bribed” by the promise of lavish public spending, to help poor rice farmers for instance. But there is almost no evidence that any of these elections were systematically bought or rigged in anyway. Indeed, the last election, certainly, was very well conducted by comparison with other recent elections in the South-East Asian region. Indeed, when pressed, one of Mr Suthep’s main advisers admitted to me that despite all the alleged vote-buying (which he produced no evidence for) the result was still “legitimate”. And the incontinent public spending programmes? In the West that’s called Keynesian economics.

Given all this, it is more than likely that the protesters will carry on with pressing Mr Suthep’s idea of setting up what he calls a “people’s council”, to supersede the government. They have asked for profound changes in the electoral system now to ensure “clean” elections, and that could give them an excuse not to participate in the election of February 2nd. But as with much else in Mr Suthep’s programme, how he might clean up the electoral system remains a mystery.

The Democrat Party will also have to decide how to respond. Their MPs resigned en masse on December 8th to join the protests (eight of their number, including Mr Suthep, did so a month ago to lead the demonstrations). Now they have to decide whether to throw in their lot with the protesters completely, or live up to their name, at least, and contest an election—which they will almost certainly loose.

Thus the only certainty is that calling this election is not going to make Ms Yingluck’s opponents suddenly melt away. They have other political calculations to make—and some of those should become clearer in the next few days.