Thaksin Shinawatra love him or hate him Part 2

During the last half of 2005 Thaksin came under increasing fire. One of the reason Thaksin was under fire was Thaksin could no longer keep all his misdeeds and wrong doings hidden from public view and they were openly being question for the first time.

Thaksin came under public attack with rallies by the newly formed People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Thaksin countered with one of his favorite weapons being an endless volley of lawsuits, attempted disruption of the rallies and much more. As many of Bangkok’s Taxi drivers were from Thaksin’s core support in Isaan, Taxies did not offer transportation to or from the site of the rallies as a further attempt to disbursed the rallies.

All the time while this was going on Thaksin was methodically dismantling Thailand’s democracy and consolidating power. All the checks and balances of democracy, division of power were being removed by Thaksin’s deep influence in every branch of government including the courts.

Shortly after a speech given by the King of Thailand on the eve of December 4, 2005 Thaksin dropped many if not all of his lawsuits against the PAD. As the King of Thailand used metaphors in his speech, many felt the speech was directed at Thaksin. Apparently Thaksin felt the same. (Link to speech)

For the next month Thaksin actually was seen to be behaving until the start of 2006. In the first few days of 2006 Thaksin was seen in Singapore. When he returned to Thailand he changed a law that opened a tax loophole. Then Thaksin sold Shin Corp. And avoided paying Billions in taxes. This turned out to be the straw that broke the camels back and started Thaksin’s fall from power.

Thaksin was under such great pressure to step down after the Shin deal, Thaksin dissolved parliament and called for new elections to show he still had the support of the people. Thaksin knew this was all over the heads of the vast majority of his undereducated supporters in Isaan.

The growing opposition to Thaksin was gaining strength and as by Thai law all Thais must vote. As a result the opposition parties fielded no candidates leaving the vote dead. Thaksin’s party however paid unknowns to run against Thaksin’s party to present what only appeared to be a fair election. So essentially the April elections were meant to reseat parliament and give Thaksin the manipulated victory he wanted to silence his critics. So to counter that the Thais very simply checked the ‘No Vote’ option on the ballot to not give Thaksin his victory. Later the election was disqualified because of the circumstances of buying parties to run. This abnormality of buying people and parties eventually lead to Thaksin’s party being dissolved, and Thaksin along with 110 other banned from politics for 5 years in May 2007.

After this Thaksin falsely announced he was resigning and leaving his deputy prime minister in charge of the caretaker government. However this turned out to be just another one of Thaksin’s lies as he returned about 6 weeks later. By then Thaksin had earned the reputation of saying exactly opposite of what the truth was and what he intended. Very simply no meant yes and yes meant no.

Over the next 3 months the PAD rallies grew in strength peeking at 110,000 strong. Thaksin saw no end to this with peaceful measures and he absolutely refused to step down. This left violence as an option. Thaksin always insulates himself so to administer attacks by hired thugs Thaksin had to place some human shields in place. The attacks started small with old men, young children and women among the first victims. Each attack grew in the viciousness. There were reports that several thousand armed pro Thaksin people were heading for the main rally hoping to spark a riot allowing Thaksin to declare a state of emergency giving Thaksin sweeping powers to arrest anyone and effectively end the PAD rally.

About the same time Thaksin was about to place the last card of the deck in his hand by securing the military under his control. Thaksin gave the final orders to move his key people into key military positions and his opponents in inactive positions. As Thaksin likes to separate himself from his dirty deeds, those orders were givien as Thaksin was heading to the United Nations in New York. It is when Thaksin was in New York that the coup was staged.

The coup and it’s fallout in part 3


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