Bangkok - Fugitive former Thai premier Thaksin Shinwatara
on Friday named the current privy council president as his main
political nemesis and a plotter of the coup that toppled him from
power in 2006.
Thaksin, in a live video broadcast to thousands of this followers
in Bangkok, named Prem Tinsulanonda, the current Privy Council
president and Thai prime minister from 1980 to 1988 as the main
'powerful' person behind the September 19, 2006, coup that brought
Thaksin down.
Thaksin, who has been living in self-exile since August, last
year, denied accusations that he had been disloyal to King Bhumibol
Adulyadej, Thailand's much revered 81-year-old monarch.
Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications entrepreneur who was
prime minister between 2001 to 2006, has accused several members
of the privy council that advises King Bhumibol of being behind the
coup that overthrew him, but he had stopped short of saying the king
himself was involved.
Under Thailand's constitutional monarchy the king must remain
above politics.
On Friday, Thaksin insisted that neither the king nor Queen
Sirikit had been involved in his downfall.
Prem has repeatedly denied any involvement with the 2006 coup, as
have all other privy councillors.
Three years after the coup Thaksin still plays a powerful,
although diminished role in Thai politics, which he arguably
monopolized during his two-term premiership.
Although banned from politics for five years by a tribunal
ruling in May, 2007, and facing a two-year jail term for abuse of
power should he return to Thailand, Thaksin's huge fortune helped
the pro-Thaksin People Power Party win the election of December 23,
2007.
He is also known to be a financier of the Red Shirts movement,
which on Thursday mobilized about 25,000 protesters to bring down the
government of current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
Abhisit became prime minister in December, 2008, after a
Constituion Court ruling dissolved the People Power Party.
Abhisit leads the Democrat Party, which was in the opposition
during Thaksin's premiership and ranks as his main opponent along
with the military and other conservative forces.
Thaksin, who was once worth more than 2 billion dollars, added
populist policies to Thailand's traditional system of vote buying,
earning himself a huge following among the urban and rural poor.
He eventually antagonized the Bangkok middle class and so-called
political elite with his self-serving economic policies and
dictatorial tendancies, leading to the coup of 2006.
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