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So he did what he subsequently demonstrated himself as being so good at – hiding personal assets and manipulating rules, regulations and laws to suit his own interests. Of course, all of this accumulation of influence takes millions of dollars; Thaksin had the money and he used it.
Back in 2001, after his election, however, the Thai Supreme Court was faced with the issue of whether he violated article No. 295 of the 1997 Constitution – the charter that his Thai Rak Thai party so greedily took advantage of – which stipulates that “any person holding a political position who intentionally fails to submit the account showing assets and liabilities and the supporting documents as provided in this Constitution or intentionally submits the same with false statements or conceals the facts which should be revealed shall vacate office as from the date of the expiration of the time limit for the submission under Section 292.” In short, assets had to be declared.
There was trouble even earlier, because although Thaksin was still a Cabinet member in 1997 under the Chavalit Yongchaiyuth administration, when Chavalit resigned in November it was deemed that Thaksin was no longer a political officeholder. History will probably iron this out because the actual facts are generally available, but it is doubtful that judges who ruled in Thaksin’s favor can be called to account for their rationale.
Public clamor rose for and against Thaksin in 2001 during the assets case, with the Thai people finding their most popularly elected prime minister facing possible disqualification. This lent some credence to reports that Supreme Court justices ruling on the case were influenced by the public to hold back from blocking Thaksin’s incumbency. The issue of billions of baht spent in elections costs was also discussed.
Push came to shove. The justices came up with a split, but the majority decision was in Thaksin’s favor. The decision was controversial, complex and hardly transparent. The Thaksin majority was eight-seven, but the eight majority justices were divided into four and three, with differences on exactly how to phrase the reason that Thaksin should be acquitted of hiding assets or even whether to cite articles that would be difficult to substantiate in terms of how they applied to Thaksin’s case.
The new premier was let off the hook, in part because he was deemed not to have intended to hide his assets. There were quiet rumors, none substantiated, that hundreds of millions of baht had been transferred to secret accounts as service payments.
Flash forward to April 2006. Thaksin had survived a full four-year term in office and had been reelected, albeit sans opposition parties who had boycotted the election. His bulldozer approach to national problems – which included muzzling the media, authorizing extrajudicial killings that led to over 2,500 bodies littering Thailand’s alleys and street corners, the slaughter of Muslims in the south, and continued asset concealment, as well as income tax evasion – the latter will likely be proven shortly in Thai courts – led to Thailand’s revered monarch declaring the Thaksin-orchestrated elections undemocratic, which they indeed were.
Thaksin was not one to banter about democracy, fully intending to go on with a lopsided and illegal victory. But after the king spoke, and when he gave sage advice to the country’s two highest courts – the Supreme and the Administrative – to carefully make the right decision, the full impact of what the prime minister had done and had been involved in began to reveal itself.
In the end, the courts opted to remain independent of Thaksin and declared the 2006 elections null and void. In addition, Thaksin, his fellow 111 Thai Rak Thai party executives, and the party itself were found to have violated election law, and the party was dissolved with the executives supposedly banned for five years from working in politics.
Once again, however, Thaksin showed his true colors and played the major role in determining who would be minister of various portfolios under nominee Samak Sundaravej’s government, belonging to the People’s Power Party. Nevertheless, Thaksin was not watching the judicial back door. In the end, he found himself facing a prolonged public relations battle with Sondhi Limthongkul and the People’s Alliance for Democracy.
Entering office in February 2008, the Samak government quickly showed itself to be a puppet of the Thai Rak Thai and was largely unable to do much except make megaproject promises and push forward measures undoing the 2007 Constitution by taking actions that would erase Thaksin’s bad record and get the 111 TRT executives back onto the production line.
However, it was not to be. The People’s Alliance for Democracy worked with other groups, including NGOs, state agencies, labor unions, and others who had been at the brunt of irresponsible and hugely corrupt populist policies by Thaksin and the Thai Rak Thai party. Eventually they had a similar widespread impact through public relations against Thaksin as that which the earlier pro-Thaksin public opinion had for him when Thaksin was let off the hook for asset concealment.
This time around, the public was increasingly convinced that Thaksin, despite what good he had done, was a crook of gargantuan proportions, making billions of dollars from share sales and other sources and not paying a penny in tax. Anyone who has been as powerful as Thaksin was, and still remains, necessarily possesses the kind of greed that eventually turns the tide against him.
As of Aug. 11, 2008, Thaksin, facing income tax evasion conviction with his wife already sentenced to three years in prison for the same, fled to England where his family can at least remain free. In the meantime, over US$1.5 billion of Thaksin’s assets in more than half a dozen Thailand banks are being threatened with seizure by the government.
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(Frank G. Anderson is the Thailand representative of American Citizens Abroad. He was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Thailand from 1965-67, working in community development. A freelance writer and founder of northeast Thailand's first local English language newspaper, the Korat Post – www.thekoratpost.com -- he has spent over eight years in Thailand "embedded" with the local media. He has an MBA in information management and an associate degree in construction technology. ©Copyright Frank G. Anderson.)
