For a man who holds a doctorate in criminal justice, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has an interesting view of the law.
The flamboyant multimillionaire will be arriving here today a few hours later than planned, so he can personally appeal to the court trying him on corruption charges.
“I will just speak from my heart, for about 20 minutes,” he told The Nation newspaper about the game plan for his court appearance today before Thailand’s Constitution Court.
He didn’t do anything wrong, he says, and that’s what he’ll tell them.
After court, he will head for the airport, arriving in Cambodia at about 4 pm. After a round of meetings, discussions and receptions, he is scheduled to leave for Burma Tuesday afternoon.
Prime Minister Hun Sen was the first head of state to invite Thaksin to visit last January, extending the invitation two days after Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party swept into office.
While in Cambodia, he plans to meet with Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim, King Norodom Sihanouk, National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and co-Ministers of Defense Tea Banh and Prince Sisowath Sirirath.
The two countries are expected to sign an agreement on economic cooperation and a memorandum of understanding regarding potential natural gas fields that both countries claim in the Gulf of Siam.
Thaksin is accused of trying to hide some of his vast wealth by putting stock shares in the names of relatives and servants. He doesn’t deny that he did it, but he says his intention wasn’t to hide assets.
The shuffle became necessary after the 1997 constitution said Cabinet ministers could hold no more than 5 percent of shares in a single corporation.
Thaksin, who was deputy prime minister in 1997, said he owned 67 corporations at the time and it is impossible to remember all the details of every transaction.
And he doesn’t deny that assets were transferred to relatives and servants, but says the moves were not intended to hide wealth illegally obtained, but involved only money he had earned honestly.
“It’s not really a transfer—actually, it’s normal practice for a business that starts from a family company,” he told the Far Eastern Economic Review last November.
“There’s nothing wrong with it. Normally, if you have to register the company, you need to have seven people. You get the ones that you trust, who are not cheating you.”
Thaksin gave that interview before he became prime minister, when he was just Thailand’s wealthiest citizen. That was also before the National Counter Corruption Commission found him guilty, and the matter was appealed to the Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court is expected to rule in July. If it upholds the conviction, Thaksin will have to step down as prime minister and will be barred from politics for five years.
But, he says, that won’t be a problem either.
He’ll step down, but he won’t go away. “I will serve my country in a different [way],” he told CNN last month, after he had been installed as prime minister. The Thai Rak Thai party still controls the parliament, he noted.
“I am still the party leader,” he said. “My brain is still working. I can advise…I’m not going to hold office. I just give advice for the sake of the country, not for myself.”
Before the 1997 slump, Thaksin was worth an estimated $2 billion; these days, he says it’s probably less than $1 billion.
Not bad for a man who set out to be a police officer.
Thaksin was born in Chiang Mai Province in 1949, graduating from the Police Cadet Academy in 1973. He earned a master’s degree in criminal justice in 1975 from Eastern Kentucky University, and a doctorate in 1978 from Sam Houston State University in the US state of Texas.
He made steady progress through the ranks of the Royal Thai Police Department, rising by 1987 to lieutenant colonel in the Metropolitan Police Bureau.
But that was also the year he founded the Shinawatra Computer and Communications Group, which grew rapidly to become Thailand’s largest telecommunications company.
He was already a wealthy man by 1993, when he set up the Thaicom Foundation, which provides satellite education to children in remote areas without high schools.
Thaksin has held a number of government positions since 1994, including Minister of Foreign Affairs, member of Parliament, and head of the Palang Dharma Party. In 1998, he founded the Thai Rak Thai party.
His party scored a landslide victory in January, and Thaksin retains strong popular support in Thailand, although a recent poll found 65 percent of the voters want him to address the Constitution Court directly on the corruption question.
Thai newspapers have had a field day with the allegations, splashing details of his personal wealth and how much money was directed to which relatives on their front pages.
Last week’s coverage took a quirky turn, with The Nation noting that more than 1,000 Buddhist monks were planning a ceremony to chant for the prime minister in hopes of warding off bad luck before the court ruling.
