Was Thaksin Shinawatra deliberately allowed to leave?
From Andrew Drummond
Request: Times Sport.
Monday 11th August 2008
Thaksin Shinawatra’s decision to flee to Britain was not only predicted but almost invited and today only his staunchest supporters seemed genuinely surprised in Thailand.
Two weeks ago on July 29th both he and his wife Pojaman had applied to the courts to travel not only to Beijing for the Olympics but also to Britain for the start of the football season.
They had been granted permission only to travel to Beijing after which the courts would consider their British trip.
No sooner had they left than the Bangkok press predicted that they would not return. This was immediately vehemently denied at the weekend by people representing Thaksin saying not only would Thaksin and his wife return to Thailand but also giving the flight number and arrival time from Beijing.
A crowd of cheery supporters waited in vain at the airport.
Pojaman had already been convicted of a massive tax fraud and although she had been granted bail and could delay any imposition of sentence for years while on appeal, there was no appeal for the cases the couple were about to face.
Thaksin and his wife were due today to return to the Supreme Court in Bangkok in Bangkok to face the first in a series of other corruption charges. They were accused of corruptly buying government land at a knock down price in the centre of Bangkok, while Thaksin was in power, something akin to Gordon Brown ordering the acquisition of 16 acres of Whitehall for personal development.
And in this case three of their lawyers have already been jailed for trying to bribe a judge.
Thaksin is also due to face other corruption charges. One is that he brokered a deal with the Burmese military junta enabling them to get very cheap credit from the Thai government Export Import Bank – provided they invested in business with his Shin Communications corporation.
He is also accused of improperly running a government lottery.
“He was given the chance to leave. His permanent departure would bring an end to a lot of trouble in Thailand. He has massive support but also a section of the population is very angry at what he has done. They even suspect than on his recent trip he smuggled more money out,” a former Thai diplomatic official told me yesterday, before rushing off to join an anti-Thaksin demo.
“This is a Thai solution. But it’s not a good one.“
Last weekend it was reported that Pojaman boarded a flight to Beijing with nine cases, if so its of course rather a lot for such an Olympic opening ceremony, now matter how smart one wants to look.
In affect even though Thaksin has massive amounts of money frozen in Thailand nobody really knows his real wealth. If there is one thing he is good at it is moving his assets in and out of countries and banks. He has been acquitted once of concealing his assets, which he claimed was a genuine mistake. Another such charge is in the pipeline.
At the moment he is playing the ‘democracy’ card and he is citing Britain and a wonderful example of such.
Sweet talk? Opponents say that particular card was only dealt him when he was ousted in a military coup in September 2006.
Previous to that he had publicly stated that western styled democracy was not the answer for a country like Thailand and when he was criticised at in the United Nations over misleading the world when he claimed that Thailand did not have bird flu he famously retorted: “The United Nations is not my father.”
Opponents also claim that he was not so concerned about justice when hundreds of innocent people, if not the 2,500 quoted by Human Rights organisation, were injudicially killed in the ‘War against Drugs’ which he initiated in 2003. Nobody went through the courts for those offences perhaps because its a racing certainty that the police were the major offenders.
At any rate Thaksin’s hasty, or long planned departure, believe what you will, was good for the Thai Stock market which rallied on hearing the news of his departure.
It may also put an end to daily demonstrations against him throughout Thailand by the other ’champions’ of democracy the ‘People’s Alliance for Democracy’
At the moment however Thaksin Shinawatra probably needs Manchester City as much as the club needs his money. It is a major conduit of his cult of his personality to the rural people of Thailand, from where his major support comes.
And without the fame and exposure City gives him he could just fade into the background completely as just another oriental politician. There are no shortage of politicians in Thailand in the past, who have allegedly robbed the country and then had to spend a considerable time in exile – until they are forgiven, of their crimes forgotten.
Thaksin is not expected to return to Thailand in the near future. As one of his biographers, British academic Chris Baker, noted in Bangkok. “ He has defamed the court. So he has gone for good.”
Judges here are not addressed as ‘My Lord’ but when lawyers address them they usually end the sentence with the equivalent of ‘I am merely dust under your feet’.
The fact is that the judiciary is much the same as when Thaksin was in power . And he made full use of the judiciary to suppress his enemies. Although the investigations against him were done by committees set up by the military rulers who ousted him it was the judges who accepted the cases against him as worthy for trial. Hoisted by his own petard? We’ll have to leave it to other refs.
But the British government is going to be hard pressed to support him even though it disapproved of the coup. When Brits are in the mire in Thailand, often claiming they have been framed by Thai police, the standard operating proceduce from the British government is a rather muted: ‘We will not interfere in the judicial process of another country’. Sauce for the goose?
