Thaksin warns on economy, says no deal with military

FUGITIVE FORMER Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra warned Thailand’s ruling generals yesterday that a prolonged stay in power would only worsen economic hardship in the Kingdom.

Speaking to Reuters in Singapore, Thaksin, 66, said the junta lacked the vision and talent to fix an economy in disarray.

 “It is a government with no freedom and no pool of talent to drive the economy,” Thaksin said. “The longer they stay, the longer economic hardship is going to be there.”

A decade of turbulent politics has surrounded Thaksin and his sister Yingluck, another former prime minister; her government was ousted in the 2014 coup.

Thaksin yesterday denied long-standing reports he had struck a backroom deal with the military to leave his personal and family interests untouched in exchange for a retreat from politics.

“We are not talking. I have never telephoned anyone. I don’t know why I would get in touch with them and I have no need to,” he said.

Thaksin has lived in self-imposed exile for nearly eight years, mainly in Dubai.

In 2010, he urged his “red shirt” followers to mobilise protests calling for elections that ended in a bloody confrontation with the military in which more than 90 people died. 

His legacy of village welfare and cheap rural loans made him a hero in red-shirt country in the rural North and Northeast, where he still commands huge respect.

But critics, including the urban elite, accuse Thaksin, a former police colonel turned telecommunications tycoon, of widespread corruption. He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2008 for graft in a land purchase case, which he says was politically motivated.

The junta has promised elections next year. But some critics are sceptical, saying the military’s objective is to block Thaksin’s allies from returning to power and to consolidate the military’s own powers by writing them into a new constitution.

Thaksin’s decision to speak to media this week has riled the junta.

 Thaksi n, who said he spends his time meeting up with old friends including former heads of state, said he had adjusted to his nomadic life and made, on average, 120 landings a year in his private jet.

He believes he will return to Thailand one day but won’t go back to face charges or live under house arrest because of alleged assassination attempts.

“I am confident I can return,” he said. “I am not the bad person I am accused of being.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha rejected Thaksin’s call for talks for reconciliation and seeking political solutions to the country.

Thaksin last week gave interviews to The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, criticising the charter draft as merely a charade. He said he would like to negotiate with the government to find solutions to political problems the country faces.

Besides Reuters, Thaksin yesterday gave an interview to Al Jazeera.

Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said he did not believe there would be any lobbying from foreign countries to pressure Thailand over the junta’s “road map to democracy” after Thaksin criticised the charter draft.

Don said foreign communities believed the issue was domestic and the internal affair of Thailand. 

“They know we talk to reach understanding. No one wants to interfere in our internal affairs.”

Don said foreign counterparts had told him that the charter draft had strong points such as anti-graft measures, as they believed corruption is a major obstacle to development.

Former foreign minister Noppadon Pattama dismissed reports that Thaksin was making political movements now to offer to end his political role so that his |sister Yingluck would not face confiscation of Bt250 billion in assets over her government’s rice-pledging scheme.

“It is totally nonsense. I believe this is the mudslinging work of the intelligence unit against the two former PMs,” Noppadon said.

Noppadon said Thaksin made the comment out of concern about the country’s future and not of his own or Yingluck’s.

Deputy Prime Minister General Tanasak Patimapragorn had earlier insisted that the government, as a law-enforcement agency, would not be in the position to talk with a |person who ran away after a court sentenced him to jail.