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This information came within days of Dubai giving dubious assurances that its financial soundness was nothing to worry about – despite a stifling US$80 billion debt load and a poor appreciation for feasibility studies that led to the current commercial fiasco.
Said a news anchor, “Thaksin did not have any money invested in Dubai. He was only using Dubai as a base to operate from.” The self-exiled politician has been staying in various cities while evading corruption charges in his home country.
However, conjecture abounds that Thaksin made another huge investment mistake in Dubai and has now lost a sizeable portion of his personal finances. According to some observers, that loss caused him to cancel last week’s planned huge Red Shirt rally in Thailand, and may have also led him to fly to Europe to explore how to save what he has left.
Thaksin is very likely facing a priority problem at the moment. Can he simultaneously juggle his personal financial security and his political wheeling and dealing back home in Thailand? Or are things just too hot and uncertain in both areas, leaving him at a loss as to how he can keep his head above water?
The former prime minister may have been playing pinochle when he should have stuck to five card stud – at least there would have been no trump suit. But the fugitive ex-billionaire may have misjudged not only the game and stakes but also the cards left and yet to be drawn. Greed clouded his judgment, as it has in the past.
Thaksin’s predicament is unique in many aspects, especially in the Thai way of viewing things. Though a fugitive from justice he is not viewed with the public hatred heaped on former Prime Minister Thanom Kittikajorn, who fled the country in 1973 but managed to return, despite the public’s resistance, and even to pay a visit to the temple where he was sworn in by the Thai king.
Thaksin will not receive similar treatment if and when he returns to Thailand, although that seems to be what he wants. He wants to be declared immune from prosecution, wants his jail sentence dismissed, and then wants to settle down in Thailand to allow the masses to once again vote him into the premiership.
At least, that is what he wanted before Dubai defaulted on its US$3.5 billion debt payment due on Dec. 2, and asked for another six months of free time to try and find the money.
Unlike his counterpart Thanom, Thaksin in fact would stand a more than even chance of being re-elected if he were given a moratorium on prosecution. The Thai public is split into anti- and pro-Thaksin groups. Any scenario that imagines Thaksin back in Thailand, and at least temporarily protected by either legal injunction or physical force, would also have to factor in a certain violent clash between Thais who support and oppose him – that is, between the vanguard royalist Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts.
The Thai military has already told the media what would happen in the event of such a showdown – another coup. The military, protecting first and foremost the rights and privileges of the Thai elite, will not permit unknown situations to develop from physical clashes with unpredictable outcomes. In other words, pro-democracy and anti-establishment interests will not be allowed to supplant the traditionalists and cause uncertainty.
In any card game, the stakes are sometimes rapidly raised as the night grows late and the realization dawns on losers that they had better win something or tip over the card table. In today’s global financial uncertainty, and with Thailand’s pretense at political stability, the stakes in the game are no longer what they used to be.
Now there is a very determined and much better organized traditionalist political faction in Thailand that seems to be asserting itself up and down the spectrum of political control, social organization and, when needed, military clampdown to make sure that elitist interests prevail.
For Thaksin, or anyone else, to try to fight this reinvigorated traditionalist and anti-democratic regime is likely to be of no avail. Over the longer term, unfortunately it means a loss of rights and democracy for the Thai people and alienation from those who cherish freedom and responsible 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.)
