Thailand’s ousted Prime minister Thaksin Shinawtra arrived in Cambodia this week to claim Cambodian citizenship and start his new job with the Cambodian government. The current Thai government that was brought to power by a yellow shirted mob taking over Bangkok’s international airport, must be fuming! Instead of focusing on repairing the country’s economy that was brought to its knees by the airport sit-in, they have instead focused on trying to catch Thaksin, who has been spending much of his time in Dubai since being forced to leave his position thanks to a military coup.
To have him in a neighbouring country and not be able to get to him must be sending them frantic. At the moment I dare say there is little other political work going on other than wasting time trying to get Thaksin extradited.
So why do they want Thaksin so badly? Well, if you didn’t know, he is the ‘devil incarnate’, totally corrupt and has gotten rich by making Thailand poor. To sum it up, he is a bad, bad man! Well that’s what a lot of people believe thanks to the present government’s control of the media! Before I go on anymore, I should explain why Thaksin is in exile.
Things in Thailand aren’t always what they seem. When you first arrive its lovely and everybody is always smiling, but when you live there for ten years you get to see it for what it is. For those of you that don’t know, Thailand has draconian lese majeste laws that mean if you say anything deemed to be insulting about the Royal family, you go to prison along with your family or perhaps worse! People always say “Thai people really love their king”. Well yes, and in England there would be a lot more Manchester United supporters if there was a law saying you must support them or you’ll end up in prison! So why do they need such a law if he is such a good guy? Make your own minds up. Another interesting fact is that the King of Thailand is the wealthiest monarch in the world! Forget the queen of England and the Sultan of Brunei, the king of Thailand is far wealthier! That seems a little strange considering that 90% of people in Thailand are desperately poor. It is widely believed that he was in on the plot to kill his elder brother when they were teenagers, but of course that isn’t talked about much in Thailand for obvious reasons! Why would anyone want to kill his brother, Rama 8? Maybe, because he wanted democracy for Thailand?
There are so many other incredulous things about the Royal family, but to sum it up very briefly, Thailand is ruled by the king. The country’s wealth is with the king. People live in poverty and can’t do anything or say anything because of the lese majeste law. Thanks to the Royal family’s publicity machine, the Thai people think he does so much for the country when in fact he is the reason so many of them live in poverty. So what has any of that got to do with Thaksin? During his time in office Thaksin became incredibly wealthy and was pretty corrupt. That is what is drummed in to people in Thailand every day until they believe it. Some things tend to get forgotten though. Yes, he became incredibly rich, but so did Thailand. He is an economic genius and while he was in power the economy was booming. He was taking Thailand out of the dark ages at such a speed, and actually helping so many people in poor rural areas. Yes, he did some bad things, but he did a lot more good things for the country. He was becoming so popular and powerful that the king started to feel threatened, thus he organized the military coup to oust him. During the king’s reign he has backed a total of eighteen coups! He backed the yellow mob’s eight day takeover of the airport. He wasn’t worried about the crushing effect it would have on the economy, he was more concerned about staying in power. The present ‘totally corrupt’ government are just his puppets.
And the sad thing is, the Thai people really do love their king, but not as passionately as they used to. A lot of Thais want to see Thaksin come back and repair the damage done by its tyrannical monarchy.