The Straits Times, March 3, 2007
By Tim Lindsey & Jeremy Kingsley, For The Straits Times


BOGEY MAN?: Mr Thaksin says he likes Australia, where he can play golf all year round. His plan to buy a home here puts Canberra into a fix. -- AFP

THE exiled former prime minister of Thailand has been hitting the golfing greens in Australia.
Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, who won three landslide election victories before being toppled in a bloodless coup in September last year, says he is house-hunting too, looking for a home in Sydney with a harbour view: 'I like Australia... The weather is good. It is clean and safe and I can play golf all year around.'

But Mr Thaksin's real estate plans create a dilemma for Canberra.

A democratically elected leader, he was overthrown by the military while he was away at the United Nations in New York. The army has now installed a general in his place and no one knows with certainty when the elections they promise will take place, if at all. In the meantime, Mr Thaksin is effectively in exile but he, his wife and others close to him face corruption allegations back in Thailand.

Quite properly, Australia's government has said it supports a return to democracy in Thailand. So what is the problem then? Mr Thaksin's January visit to Singapore is part of the answer.

While he was there, he met Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar. Thailand responded by scrapping a public servant exchange programme, saying it would 'review' relations with Singapore, including its access to Thai territory for military training. Australia naturally does not want to jeopardise trade links with Thailand that exceeded US$9.5 billion (S$14.5 billion) last financial year. That is why everyone is at pains to say that Mr Thaksin has been in Australia just on a 'private visit'.

The other part of the problem for Canberra is genuine concern about the sort of government that Mr Thaksin was running when he was in power. He has hardly been a poster boy for democracy.

Before he became PM, he was one of Thailand's most successful business tycoons and opponents say his family dodged tax on the sale of his massive Shin Corp. They also say his government was openly auctioning off jobs, assets and contracts while forcing out anyone who did not support his creeping power grab. Mr Thaksin - who began his career as a cop - also backed a brutal 'security' approach towards Thailand's southern Muslim population that is now seen as a major cause of growing militancy and separatism in that region.

More damaging still for him, it seems he put the palace offside as well. After 61 years on the throne, King Bhumipol Adulyadej of Thailand is commonly described as 'revered' but that is an understatement. His word - rarely given publicly - is effectively law. To criticise him is to invite disaster. Mr Thaksin seemed to snub the King at several major public events and his comments that 'charismatic figures' were undermining him were read as a direct slur on the palace.

The result was he ended up opposed by just about every influential minority imaginable in Thailand, including the insulted monarchy (which must face a succession some time in future), outraged anti-corruption activists and most of the population of Bangkok, as well as the Muslims of southern Thailand - and, of course, the military.

Mr Thaksin, however, seemed happy to be judged at the next election, because his big majority would make him very hard to beat. And he knew the masses of rural poor outside Bangkok would likely ignore the claims against him when they voted again.

The result was a crisis, building since the snap general election of April 2, 2006. Thanks to a boycott led by opposition groups, so few Thais voted that many seats could not be filled (the Constitution requires candidates to win at least 20 per cent of the primary vote). The courts therefore held the election invalid and new elections were set for October.

But because Mr Thaksin's party won a massive majority of those who did vote in the void election, his party became the interim government and it seemed his rural support base would still deliver him yet another comfortable victory in rescheduled elections. So he refused to compromise with his critics. If anything, he became even more assertive and aggressive, further polarising the country.

The last straw was word of a significant reshuffle of the military ahead of the polls, supposedly to stack the royalist security forces with Thaksin sympathisers.

The palace and the military now began to see the Thaksin 'takeover' as a direct threat to their whole idea of what Thailand is. In these circumstances, he did not stand a chance - and sadly, nor did the Constitution or Thailand's fledgling democracy. They became the baby that went out with Mr Thaksin's bathwater.

In Bangkok today, no one seems to be missing him much, although without elections, who can tell? In the meantime, governments elsewhere are left unsure how to handle him. Is he a democratically elected leader unconstitutionally deposed, or a corrupt and power-hungry rogue leader who pushed his country to breaking point?

One thing is certain: Canberra must be hoping Mr Thaksin wakes up to the beautiful views and excellent golfing New Zealand has to offer. Or Indonesia... or anywhere else, really.

Professor Tim Lindsey is Federation Fellow and director of the Asian Law Centre at the University of Melbourne, where Jeremy Kingsley is a principal researcher.