5. Self Exile for Thaksin
Facing a barrage of court cases and one guilty verdict against his wife, Thaksin Shinawatra, 59, seems to have decided it is best to fight another day - ASSOCIATED PRESS.
By Nirmal Ghosh, Thailand Correspondent , Singapore Straits Times
BANGKOK - Upon his return from exile on Feb 28, he knelt and placed his forehead on the ground at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport.
He had come to defend himself in court and clear his name, he told reporters then.
Five months later, with no sign of the recovery of his 69 billion baht (S$2.9 billion) in frozen assets, and facing a barrage of court cases and one guilty verdict against his wife, Thaksin Shinawatra, 59, seems to have decided it is best to fight another day.
There is no doubt that he is a divisive figure in Thailand. News of his flight from Beijing on Sunday into exile in Britain saw the stock market rebound in a knee-jerk reaction after weeks of gloom, and had some analysts saying his absence may even be good for the ruling People Power Party (PPP).
But Thaksin remains popular. In village after village in the relatively poorer north and north-east, they say he was the first prime minister who ever visited them.
He had been accused of being corrupt even at the outset of his tenure in office. A split decision in his favour in a case of concealment of assets by the Constitutional Court in 2001 paved the way to the Prime Minister's office.
Thaksin was also accused of ignoring basic human rights.
In the war on drugs in 2003, police shot and killed well over 2,000 people, many of them innocents or just small-time drug users.
In 2004, the army brutally suppressed a riot in Tak Bai in the deep south, killing 78 local youth by packing them four-deep into trucks for a long journey. Thaksin said they died because they were weak from fasting, and nobody has ever been held accountable.
All that mattered little to his vote bank. Struggling under waves of methamphetamine pills from across the Myanmar border, parents were happy that a few killings scared off dealers and drove pill prices up.
And from the north and north-east, Tak Bai is just a faraway name on a map.
Easy credit schemes enabled poor farming families to shake off the vicious yoke of moneylenders and, for the first time, many were able to take loans at normal market rates and own their own houses.
Visits to clinics were charged at a flat 30 baht in a new universal health-care scheme. which defied conservative economists in Bangkok and put great strain on the health-care system - but was wildly popular among the poor people who used it.
Thaksin parlayed the support from the masses into a huge vote bank. Voted to power twice with large majorities, he spoke openly about staying in power for 20 years.
But his critics saw Thaksin - one of Thailand's richest men on the back of his telecoms-based Shin Corp - as self-serving, authoritarian and interested only in money and power.
Liberals in Bangkok found an echo of their views in the old-school aristocratic, bureaucratic and military elite who had run Thailand for generations. The elite, long distrustful of 'money politics', found Thaksin's overwhelming political and economic domination of the country hard to swallow.
His sale of Shin Corp to Singapore's Temasek Holdings in early 2006 was only proof to them that he was in it for his own gain. It helped spur the movement against him that, at its peak, managed to repeatedly bring more than 100,000 people out onto the streets of Bangkok.
A complex set of moves in which Thaksin tried to outmanoeuvre his opponents saw him finally checkmated by the army, which took over Government House and key installations including TV channels - without firing a shot - in a few hours on the night of Sept 19, 2006, when Thaksin was in New York readying to address the United Nations General Assembly.
Deprived of his position at home, he styled himself as a champion of democracy and at the same time kept busy - and, not coincidentally, in the media limelight - by buying English football club Manchester City in July last year for £80 million (S$217 million).
Meanwhile, in Thailand, the military-appointed government set about slowly but surely decimating his political machinery.
Anti-corruption agencies were ordered to investigate Thaksin for corruption, and the Constitutional Court dissolved the Thai Rak Thai for electoral fraud and banned 111 party executives from politics for five years.
The military-appointed government drew up a new Constitution, which in a clear reaction to the Thaksin era, seemed aimed at a return to pliable coalition governments.
On his return to Thailand, with the brief moment of 'political theatre' at the airport, Thaksin repeatedly swore off politics - something few believed, given his undoubted and continued popularity among his voter base, and his own track record and personal motto - that it is 'better to die than to live like a loser'.
He announced grand plans for an Asian football academy, and three prominent Thai players were sent to train with Manchester City.
He rejuvenated his charitable Thaicom Foundation, which has a range of educational projects and hands out scholarships. He said he would be a salesman for Thailand, and brought Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal to Bangkok to meet Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej.
He toured temples in the north-east making merit - and was greeted by thousands of supporters.
His presence in Thailand, though, sharply increased friction. The formation of the PPP, which rode to power on the back of restoring his populist programmes, was remote-controlled by Thaksin from his overseas bases.
It packed its ranks with Thaksin loyalists and was accused by his critics - many of who were dissatisfied with the slow pace of investigations against him - of being a puppet administration.
Anti-government street protests emerged again several weeks ago, and two Cabinet ministers close to Thaksin were forced out of office.
In response, he has kept a low profile in recent weeks.
The guilty verdict against his wife Pojaman - hailed by Thaksin's critics as an example of the independence of the judiciary in passing judgment on powerful people - was seen as a harbinger of more adverse judgements to come.
That the shadow of Thaksin and his family will remain large over Thai politics is certain.
His message yesterday contained an enigmatic reference to 'revealing the truth', but he deferred that moment, saying: 'Today is not my day.'
