This is not going to work

29 June 2011

This will not work. The Thai police - why is this the police and not the election commission - have decreed that any political campaigning via Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will be banned from 6pm on Saturday until midnight on Sunday.

No alcohol will be on sale or served during these hours as well, police spokesman Prawut Thawornsiri said.

More than 900 websites will be monitored for signs of a breach of the electoral law during those hours, Pol Maj Gen Prawut said.

The ban covers not only political parties and their candidates but also the general public. How about rascott.com or my facebook and twitter accounts?

Pol Maj Gen Prawut said the use of online campaigning tools such as Facebook and Twitter is of serious concern and police are stepping up efforts in making the users aware of the restriction.

"We are asking the Election Commission to help spread the word," he said. He added police had received some complaints about vote-buying but found nothing when looking into them. Police have set up a hotline, 1599, for the public to report irregularities they suspect in the election campaign.

That last paragraph is hilarious. The police have found no evidence of vote-buying when looking into complaints! Every major newspaper and news agency has published articles about the rising costs of vote buying and everyone knows that it happens and that every party does it.

Too little too late

29 June 2011

The Gulf News gleefully reported that foreigners investing in UAE real estate will get a three-year multiple entry visit visa, according to a Cabinet decision made Tuesday.

Apparently analysts have hailed the decision to increase the duration of the entry visas for foreigners investing in UAE property from six months to three years. Only trouble wit this is that the Gulf News could not find any analysts to actually quote. Though they did find some real estate professionals, who have amore than vested interest, who thought it is a good thing such as Craig Plumb, Director of Reseach at Jones Lang Lasalle, who told Gulf News: “It is a very good decision because it clarifies the vague areas to real estate investors.”

The promise of a long-term residency visa was a major driver of home purchases during the real estate boom prior to mid-2008. The visa situation of non-resident home buyers became unclear in 2008, and was subsequently clarified by Federal authorities in mid-2009, with the announcement that real estate investor visas were only for six months and subject to conditions. So all that was promised was effectively removed.

The limitation on visas for home buyers in 2009 removed one of the key attractions for foreign, and especially regional, investors in the Dubai real estate market.

Emirates 24/7 loyally published an article titled “Real estate industry basks in glow of new property visa ruling.” The Khaleej Times headline is "Three-year investor visa to boost property sector."

But this may all be too little and too late: Dubai's oversupply issues are being exacerbated by the ongoing completion of new properties. Jones Lang LaSalle estimates that over 50,000 new residential units will be completed in Dubai between now and the end of 2013, raising the current stock of homes by some 15 per cent. This means it is premature to speak of a recovery in the property sector driven by visa extensions, as the net impact is likely to be more one of reducing the negative repercussions of oversupply.

Worse still there is not yet any clarity of the rules. Already the property has to have a minimum market value of AED1 million. Will the revised rule apply to all nationalities ad all investors equally? Will the visa extension apply beyond the 2011-2013 period of the strategic plan.

In Dubai investors’ confidence has been badly shaken. Extending the visa to three years is just one step in the right direction. If the visa rules do not apply equally to all nationals, the effect of the new visa term will be lessened.

Thailand's Fickle Democracy

28 June 2011 - The New York Times

There is little doubt that Thais like the idea of democracy. They have been fighting for it on and off since 1932, when absolute monarchy was overthrown.

Most Thais will vote on July 3 for the third time in six years. Campaigning is feverish, posters omnipresent and a raucous — though not entirely free — media offer endless news, comment and speculation. Even those Thais who dislike the results mostly shy away from openly opposing democracy.

Yet this election is about Thailand’s repeated failure to agree on what constitutes democracy and on how democracy fits with the older institutions — the monarchy, the military and the centralized bureaucracy. Those failures have been seen in the cycle of elections and coups that has repeated itself since the 1973 overthrow of the Thanom Kittikachorn dictatorship.

But two things are different that make this election especially important and also unlikely to resolve political tensions.

The first is the personality of Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled prime minister deposed by a coup in 2006 who is fighting this election through a surrogate party, Pheu Thai, headed by his photogenic youngest sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Thailand has had several democratically elected prime ministers but none aimed for, let alone achieved, populist appeal. They got to the top through deal-making between parties. Thaksin, however, was an authentic populist who identified the potential power of the nation’s poorer classes and used his wealth and organizing ability to exploit it. Whether Thaksin was an authentic democrat is another matter.

The second is a broad generational change that manifests itself in different ways. Income and wealth gaps are wide and getting wider but there is no shortage of work; Thailand now relies on about three million foreign workers, mostly from Myanmar, to do its dirtiest jobs. Political awareness has increased thanks to education and the ubiquitous media creating a feeling among many Thais, particularly in the lower income groups, that they are not getting a fair share of the cake. Generational change also affects views of the role of the old institutions at a time when thoughts are on succession to the king, now 83.

For Thaksin’s defenders the problem has been the unwillingness of the military and monarchists to accept democracy: Thaksin was overthrown, the Constitution was changed, and many Thaksin supporters believe the judiciary was manipulated to oust two prime ministers. They see the incumbent prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Democrat Party, as a front for conservative forces that want a veto over who is prime minister, and, as in Bangkok last spring, is willing to use violence against peaceful demonstrators.

The anti-Thaksin forces accuse him, with some reason, of abusing his power in office for personal and political gain, and undermining the institutions and checks and balances built into the 1997 constitution — then viewed as a democratic model. Less convincingly, Thaksin’s opponents also accuse him of fomenting antimonarchist sentiment and threatening economic stability through populist spending on low-cost health services and aid for farmers.

So the country has two choices. An Abhisit government that has proven competent but owes its existence to the military and is viewed by many to represent a self-interested elite, a choice that risks a backlash in the streets by backers of Thaksin. Or, a return to the Thaksin camp, a choice that risks a possible crackdown by the military.

This being Thailand some kind of deal is always possible, even one that allows for the eventual return and pardon of Thaksin. Money speaks loudly in Thai politics, and big business, though tending to be critical of Thaksin, is more concerned with avoiding political mayhem.

Given the passions that Thaksin arouses and that the king is no longer seen as peacemaker between factions, finding a liberal and democratic way forward will not be easy. Neither Thaksin nor his military and monarchist enemies are at ease with the freedoms, rules and compromises necessary for democratic politics. But most Thais are, which suggests that the election will neither resolve nor worsen the tensions arising from economic success and social change.

Affordable homes plan for Newton Ferrers village

28 June 2011 BBC News, Devon

Set in an idyllic spot on the Yealm estuary in South Devon it is popular with yachting enthusiasts and holidaymakers.

It is described as a "villagey village" with a thriving University of the Third Age, a school, shop, post office and pub. But, according to Suzie Cooper, the chair of the parish council, it is also a property "hot spot" with not enough houses for young families and too many grand retirement properties and second homes.

"It's becoming like nearby Salcombe [where properties regularly cost over £1m]" she said. A three-bedroom house in Newton Ferrers currently costs about £950,000. "We have, on average, seven applications for new houses each month, over 74 in the last year," Mrs Cooper added.

"But most of them are investment properties for people planning to retire to the village. "We've got a very lopsided community." Mrs Cooper has spent years campaigning for affordable housing in Newton Ferrers.

The village is in the South Hams, which has the second highest number of second homes in England and the highest house prices in Devon. Mrs Cooper said: "It's essential that we have younger people in the village. "If you don't have young people you don't have children and if you don't have children you don't have a school, etc, - you just have a village full of pensioners.

In an effort to make the community less "lopsided" South Hams District Council is trialling a new affordable housing scheme in Newton Ferrers. The Village Housing Initiative (VHI) aims to build small housing developments on the edge of villages on land which the landowner might have no use for.

In exchange for the land, the landowner is given one of the finished houses, a building plot and materials or a cash sum. The Newton Ferrers development will be considered for planning permission later this month. There are plans to build 16 affordable homes on the edge of the village. If it goes ahead it will include 14 affordable homes for local people, eight to be rented and six to be sold as shared ownership properties.

It will also include one property to be sold at market value, to offset the cost for the developer, Torre Homes, and the house for the landowner.

Councillor Mike Saltern, who oversees housing for the council, said: "Because of the recession we realised that we needed to be thinking outside the box and that's when the idea emerged. "The aim of it is to help sustain villages, keeping villages alive is a key issue for us."

Mr Saltern said a problem in the past had been providing landowners with enough of an incentive to part with their land. He said: "In this scheme the landowner is going to get a house built. He has the choice of whether he keeps that house or sells it on."

Beauty therapist Jane McCleod and her teenage son, who grew up in the village, are hoping to move into one of the new houses if they are built. She said she had not been in good health and they currently live in an "old rented two-bedroom bungalow". She said she would love the "security" of owning somewhere. Ms McCleod said: "There is no way I could afford to buy round here, houses cost mega money. "I dread the thought of having to move anywhere else." Mrs Cooper said there were some people in the village opposed to the housing scheme but most people recognised the need for it. "There isn't a reason why they shouldn't be built.

"We need everybody to have a proper community, we need common folk like me."

Emirates on the decline

27 June 2011

At the Paris Air Show the Skytrax organisation announced their World’s Best Airlines awards.

The overall top ten, in order, was as follows. Asiana was the 2010 winner and has slipped to third place.

Qatar Airways
Singapore Airlines
Asiana Airlines
Cathay Pacific Airways
Thai Airways International
Etihad Airways
Air New Zealand
Qantas Airways
Turkish Airlines
Emirates

Qatar Airways won the title as the World's Best Airline at the 2011 World Airline Awards, being named as the Airline of the Year 2011in a ceremony held at the French Air and Space Museum, as part of the Paris Air Show.

Other award winners included Asiana Airlines who named the World's Best Cabin Staff, AirAsia retaining their crown as the World's Best Low-Cost Airline, Dragonair as the World's Best Regional Airline.

Voted by over 18.8 million airline passengers from 100 different nationalities, the World Airline Awards™ are held by Skytrax to be the most prestigious and respected quality recognition of front-line product and service standards across the world airline industry. With 200 airlines featured, the awards reflect customer satisfaction levels across 38 different items of airline front-line product and service.

Emirates was 5th in 2009 and 8th in 2010. There is a trend here. Emirates did win best In Flight Entertainment, but you need more than that to maintain a reputation.

EK is suffering from its own rapid growth. The product in all classes is horribly inconsistent. Compare all classes on an A380 to an A330. 10 across long haul on a 777 is miserable. Qatar is just 9 across. Crews are hugely inconsistent and often inexperienced. Food quality is deteriorating.

EK appears to be heading in one only direction.

One other note on the results; Thai Airways in 5th place is preposterous for an airline with no almost IFE on many of its long haul fleet and again a woefully inconsistent product. So well done to Qatar Airways.

Do not forget the Bahrain doctors who dared to speak out

25 June 2011

Rupert Wingfield Hayes for BBC News, Bahrain

As the Arab Spring protests continue - and world attention shifts to other places - a group of Bahraini doctors go on trial for speaking to the foreign media.

Amid the violent turmoil of Libya and Syria, it is easy to forget what happened on the island of Bahrain three months ago.

It is certainly what the officials at Formula One would have liked. And it is certainly what the Bahraini royal family and its many friends in the Western business community would also prefer.

Sitting on the 52nd floor of a glistening office tower overlooking the centre of Manama this week, it is also what I was asked to do.

Bahrain's royals are nothing if not charming.

Over lunch of pan-seared sea bream and chilled spinach soup, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Mubarak spoke wistfully of his love for Leeds football club and of rainy days at Elland Road back in the 1970s, when Leeds was one of the great English clubs.

The recent street protests were, well, unfortunate.

The protesters had pushed too far, demanded too much, the country was descending into anarchy.

The king had no option but to step in and restore order. The violence was regrettable, but reports of it were exaggerated. And now there will be a genuine dialogue with the opposition.

Doctors on trial

By the end of lunch, I was starting to believe that the Western media had perhaps got it wrong. Until my mind's eye flashed back to the scene I had witnessed a few hours earlier.

In a military court room on the outskirts of Manama, I had sat and watched as 20 doctors had shuffled into the dock, their heads shaved, their clothes rumpled.

Some were young, others older and grey.

They could not squeeze enough chairs into the dock, so the young ones stood and allowed the older ones to sit.

For three hours, I watched as the prosecution made its case.

The doctors were, it alleged, part of a militant Shia clique that had taken control of Manama's biggest hospital and used it as a base to try to overthrow the royal government.

They had spread false rumours, used ambulances to ferry weapons, including machine guns, to the street protesters.

They had refused to treat patients from Bahrain's minority Sunni elite and they had stolen blood from the blood bank.

It was a strange collection of charges.

The evidence against them is equally murky. The first prosecution witness, a government official, kept referring to confidential sources and to confessions made by the defendants.

Confessions are always a very suspect form of evidence.

Ask anybody who has experienced torture and they will tell you that almost everybody breaks in the end.

And one of the most effective ways of making someone sign a confession is to stop them sleeping.

In China, I once met a man who had confessed to killing his own wife after being kept awake by police for 10 days and nights.

His wife was alive.

So what the wife of one of the doctors in Bahrain told me was all the more disturbing.

In a brief meeting outside the court, her husband had told her he had been blindfolded and handcuffed, and forced to stand up for three weeks.

Forcing someone to stand does not sound like torture, but that is exactly why it is so effective.

“ As the world now turns its attention to more pressing stories... there is a real danger that the Bahrain doctors will be forgotten ”

Back in my hotel room, I trawled the internet and BBC archive for video of the men I had seen in the dock that morning.

It did not take long. There they were on the BBC and al-Jazeera speaking out passionately, as wounded protesters were rushed into the emergency room behind them.

One of the doctors, a softly spoken man called Ali Al Akri, struggled to hold back tears as he pleaded with the government to stop the killing, to stop shooting the protesters.

In court, the prosecutor had called Ali Al Akri the main ringleader of the doctors' conspiracy.

He did not look like a ringleader to me. Passionate, angry, distraught, yes. The leader of an anti-government coup? No.

His real crime was to have spoken out to us, the foreign media. To have told the outside world what was going on inside his hospital. Of the effects of buckshot and tear gas. To show X-rays of high-velocity bullets embedded in protesters' bodies.

They were images that brought shame and international opprobrium upon friendly, liberal, sophisticated Bahrain.

And it is for that, that the Bahrain doctors are now being punished.

As the world now turns its attention to more pressing stories - in Libya, Syria and beyond - there is a real danger that the Bahrain doctors will be forgotten and that the Bahrain authorities will be quietly allowed to get on with persecuting those who dared to stand up and to speak out.

Thai Story continues

25 June 2011

You can find volume 2 of Thai Story by looking up Andrew McGregor Marshall on the internet.

One quote summarises part two: "the modern monarchy is under threat because the military and bureaucracy have for decades used the palace to legitimize an increasingly unsustainable political status quo based on myths that cannot stand up to scrutiny. As Thailand enters the 21st century with its citizens better educated and better informed than they have ever been in history, more and more people are quite naturally questioning the fables underpinning the official narrative, and more and more people are demanding openness, accountability and a greater voice in politics."

Lucky Yingluck

23 June 2011 The Economist

Even copying their opponent’s policies has done the ruling party little good.

With little more than a week to go before polling day on July 3rd, it is clear that the opposition Pheu Thai (PT) party will win more seats than any other in Thailand’s 500-strong parliament. This will mark an extraordinary comeback for the unofficial leader of PT, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister ousted in a military coup in 2006 and now living in exile in Dubai as a fugitive from Thai justice. Some even predict that PT may win an outright majority, though a hung parliament looks more likely. But in Thai politics merely winning an election is not enough; whether PT gets to form a government is another matter entirely.

The surge of enthusiasm for PT owes a lot not only to Mr Thaksin’s enduring popularity among Thailand’s rural poor, but also to the dizzying rise of the official party leader, his younger sister Yingluck, who was unknown only a month or so ago. When Mr Thaksin picked her to lead PT into the election many dismissed it as a quixotic, even bizarre gesture. It turns out to have been a stroke of genius.

The 44-year-old businesswoman has never held or campaigned for political office before. Yet she behaves as if she has been doing it all her life and has completely wrong-footed her main opponent, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister and leader of the Democrat Party that heads the ruling coalition. At the start of the campaign the two rivals were just about even. It is mostly Ms Yingluck’s bravura campaigning that has opened up the gap. Mr Thaksin described his younger sister as his “clone”. In fact, she brings her own qualities and attributes to the campaign, drawing in people beyond the PT base.

A fresher face even than the relatively youthful 47-year-old Mr Abhisit, and a woman campaigning in the very male world of Thai politics, she has injected a buzz and excitement into the election. Her seasoned, pragmatic campaign managers have exploited her looks and easy-going nature to the full. She, for her part, has played the perfect candidate by sticking closely to her sound bites and smiling ceaselessly at the camera.

As to her policies (not that her adoring supporters care), she has promised to continue the populist economic programmes of her brother when he was prime minister from 2001 to 2006. She promises, for instance, to give free Tablet PCs to about 1m new schoolchildren and to raise the minimum wage. But, aware that triumph for Mr Thaksin’s party will undoubtedly rile those (such as the army) who got rid of him in a 2006 coup, she has struck a conciliatory tone. She vows that there will no revenge for the coup, and that she won’t rush into devising amnesties for Mr Thaksin. For all the enthusiasm of his “red shirt” supporters, he remains a divisive figure.

Even with the advantages of incumbency, the Democrat Party has floundered. Their rather bewildered campaign manager concedes that the timing of Ms Yingluck’s candidature, pretty much on the day the campaign began, was brilliant. She stole the headlines and has never looked back—and a month is just long enough to remain an exciting novelty while avoiding serious scrutiny. Some mutter that she could yet have to answer to charges of perjury arising from the sale of Mr Thaksin’s telecoms company five years ago, but that will have to wait until after July 3rd.

In contrast to the smiley-feely Ms Yingluck, Mr Abhisit and his deputy and finance minister, Korn Chatikavanij, are both Oxford-educated technocrats, less polished at working a crowd. Mr Abhisit has looked less stiff on the stump than in past elections, though it doesn’t come naturally. One recent afternoon, he walked the length of a market in Bangkok, shaking hands, posing for photos with vendors and residents, a yellow garland draped around his powder-blue shirt and windbreaker. Supporters foisted gifts on him; cakes, flowers and the odd baby. He smiled—but it might as well have been a wince. Arriving at a community centre where former drug addicts had gathered on plastic chairs, he launched into a detailed analysis of why Mr Thaksin’s hardline policies against dealers did not work. He lost the audience’s attention.

It does not help that the Democrat Party has proposed a lot of similarly populist economic policies to PT’s. In the scramble for votes, especially among Mr Thaksin’s core constituency of poorer supporters, the Democrat Party—against its better instincts—has also made a lot of expensive promises. It is offering subsidies for rice farmers and its own version of a hike in the minimum wage. One academic commentator, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, has called this campaign the “race to the populist bottom”. Mr Korn has costed PT’s populism at a whopping 2.06 trillion baht ($68 billion) in the first year, but the Democrats aren’t doing so badly either. These promises of largesse alienate their traditional supporters in business, nervous about having to pay for the new wages, and do Ms Yingluck no damage.

For all the focus on Mr Abhisit and Ms Yingluck, if neither wins an outright majority of seats, then it will (as usual) be Thailand’s smaller parties that play a decisive role in a hung parliament. None has any ideology; they will simply haggle for ministerial posts and local pork.

Bhumjaithai, a vehicle for Newin Chidchob, a banned politician and former Thaksin henchman, could come third, perhaps with 40 or so seats. The party says it will stick with the Democrats, its current partners, and is leery of PT. Another party, Chart Thai Pattana (CTP), is courting both main parties and may well join PT in a flash. Other parties lack the numbers but could add some ballast, particularly if PT is nervous about fraud cases that might disqualify MPs. One tiny party is led by a retired general, Sondhi Boonyaratglin, leader of the coup in 2006, and so an unlikely ally for Thaksinites. But there are no permanent enemies in Thai politics.

And then there is Mr Thaksin’s old foe, the powerful army. Besides staging the 2006 coup, it was instrumental behind the scenes in the formation of the present government. It has promised to stay in its barracks. But a close result and the ensuing horse-trading might tempt it to meddle again—especially if it looks as if Mr Thaksin is on his way back.

Thai Story turns rumours into reality

23 June 2011

Andrew Marshall recently left Reuters after 17 years of reporting in large part from the Middle and Far East. He left primarily to pursue his own analysis and reporting of both history and current events in Thailand.

You can read more about his career and his objectives on his web site - www.zenjournalist.com

One sentence sums up his release today of the first of four instalments of his Thai story:

"Thailand needs to escape the wretched cycle of corruption, conspiracies and coups that has blighted its modern history. A first step is to clearly acknowledge what is happening in Thailand today. Thailand's people deserve to know the truth, and they deserve to be allowed to express what they believe, instead of facing jail or exile for simply saying things that cannot be denied."

Never has that need been more obvious than today when at a Democrat rally today the Bangkok Post reports that "the deputy prime minister in charge of security affairs said not one person was killed at Ratchaprasong during the military crackdown on the red-shirt protest on May 19 last year." I guess the adjacent temple for instance does not count as Ratchaprasong.

Suthep also alleged that "red-shirt core member Jatuporn Prompan was likely the person behind the killing of army specialist Khattiya Sawasdipol, widely known as Seh Daeng, during the violent anti-government demonstration last year" (Bangkok Post). Of course he produced no evidence to support his claim. Worse still, although Suthep was head on the infamous CRES he did nothing to investiate Seh Daeng's assassination.

The real Thai story will be played out in two stages - the upcoming election and the fall out from that and then in the succession.

Exiled Thai Prime Minister Awaits Chance to Return

21 June 2011 By Thilo Thielke for Der Spiegel in Dubai

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been living in exile in Dubai since 2008. His sister stands a good change of becoming the country's new prime minister after upcoming elections. SPIEGEL ONLINE visited Thaksin in his new home and spoke to him about his relationship to Thailand and the king.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.
The villa in "Emirates Hills," an upscale district in Dubai, is a gleaming white color. The gate opens automatically, and a black Jaguar stands in the garage next to a large Lexus luxury sedan. There is a golf course and a lake nearby.

The villa's interior looks cool. The reception hall is decorated in gray and beige. In the middle, two red orchids stand on a glass table, and a massive mirror dominates the back wall. Abstract artworks hang on the other walls, and there are oriental rugs on the floors. Everywhere you look, there is glass and chrome in abundance. Standing on a small table are framed photographs showing the villa's owner with high-ranking Arab officials.

Then the owner appears in person. He is wearing a black suit with an open collar, and he makes his way down the curved marble staircase with a relaxed air. The man is Thaksin Shinawatra. The 61-year-old billionaire is the former prime minister of Thailand, the former owner of the football club Manchester City and a one-time telecom tycoon. But now he is living the life of a phantom. Thailand's current government would prefer to see him behind bars. In 2008, a Thai court sentenced him in absentia to two years in prison on charges of abuse of power and corruption. The equivalent of roughly €1 billion ($1.4 billion) of his private fortune was confiscated.

When asked whether he will fight his case in person, Thaksin smiles and says: "There are no fair trials in my homeland. Not for me, and not for my supporters. So I'll stay here for now."

As he noted in a SPIEGEL interview last week, Thaksin would like to return to Thailand in December to attend the wedding of his oldest daughter, Pintongtha. Since the interview was published, the planned wedding and the eventual homecoming of this glamorous exile has become "the talk of the town," writes the Bangkok Post, a local English-language newspaper.

But nobody can really say whether that will happen. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Thailand on July 3, and Thaksin's sister Yingluck is running for prime minster as the candidate of the Pheu Thai Party, the country's largest opposition party. Although Yingluck is currently ahead in most polls, she is opposed by a military that is not averse to carrying out coups, as well as the influential establishment in the capital city. What's more, since there are multiple parties in the running, whoever wants to form the next government will probably be forced to put together a coalition.

Back in Dubai, Thaksin asks me to take a seat at the table. What follows is a four-course meal including Thai chicken soup, rice, curry and a glass of nicely chilled white wine.

Thaksin confesses that he felt quite foreign in Dubai in the beginning. Since Thailand declared his identification papers invalid, he has traveled on Nicaraguan and Montenegrin passports. But he has now purchased the house in Dubai. He has a number of excellent Thai chefs and is regularly visited by friends and relatives.

Still, Thaksin spends most of his time on the road. He says he often visits his "old friend" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He also takes frequent trips to Africa -- including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda -- where he has invested in natural resources. "The continent is ideal for a newcomer like me," he says. In fact, he says that the private jet he bought 10 months ago has been in constant use. "In 10 months," he says, "I have flown on it for 750 hours. That makes 75 hours a month, or 2.5 every day." During the flights, Thaksin, who describes himself as "hyperactive," spends time online, organizing his business affairs via Skype.

The one place Thaksin hasn't been in a long time is Cambodia. "Not since I was chased out by F-16 fighter jets," he says. Many in Thailand have resented him since he went to work for his "good friend" Hun Sen, the prime minister of Cambodia, as an adviser. There is recurring friction between the two neighboring states, mostly to do with border disputes.

There are a number of highly sensitive issues in Thailand, and the atmosphere there is tense. More than 90 people -- most of them Thaksin supporters -- lost their lives during demonstrations last spring. Since then, hardly a week has gone by without rumors of an impending coup, and there are fears of renewed violence and unrest. More and more opposition members are being arrested on charges of having insulted the royal house.

As Thaksin admits himself, the controversial paragraph about lèse majesté in the penal code was also used during his term in office. He describes how he wanted to have one person who continuously criticized the royal house arrested. "But the king himself restrained me from doing so," he says. "He doesn't want the paragraph to be applied."

If he does make the trip to Thailand in December, Thaksin says his "greatest wish" is to be able to show his "respect" to King Bhumibol on his 84th birthday. "People keep accusing me of not being loyal to the monarchy," Thaksin says. "But that's not true." He explains that in 2006, just three months before the military coup, he hosted the celebration marking the king's 60 years on the throne. "I personally invited most of the king's guests because I wanted to prepare a nice party for him to make him feel happy and strong."

Being accused of harboring anti-royal sentiments is a serious thing in Thailand. What's more, Thaksin feels like his political opponents have denounced him. "The king is old and sick and stands above politics," Thaksin says. "He should be left in peace and not dragged into current political conflicts. I was always loyal to the king."

Thaksin claims that he himself has a lot of respect for the monarchy. "King Bhumibol was already king when I was born," he says.

Fly Dubai launches Damman

21 June 2011

Low cost airline flydubai has announced its 41st route, with the launch of new flights to Dammam, Saudi Arabia, commencing July 17.

flydubai has a target to achieve a profit by 2012.

The new flights will operate on a daily basis between Dubai's Terminal 2 and King Fahd International Airport, Dammam; in Saudi, flydubaiflydubai also connects to Riyadh, Jeddah, Gassim, Yanbu and Abha.

Being the third largest city in Saudi, and home to the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, and is responsible for almost 75 per cent of the Kingdom's oil-based economy, flydubai is aiming to tap into the lucrative economic and commercial sector.

A one-way fare to Dammam from Dubai starts at Dh400, inclusive of one piece of hand luggage weighing up to 7kg and one small laptop bag or hand bag.

The airline is aiming for further expansion. The target is to reach 70 destinations in the 4.5-hour flight radius from Dubai. Another plan is to launch a holidays division.

C-in-C's advice ratchets up the worry factor

21 June 2011 The Bangkok Post

Vote for good people. Think carefully before you cast your vote. Avoid a repeat of previous situations. Cast the vote that will make the country and monarchy safe.

His words seem like generic advice to a populace heading for the polling booths in two weeks' time.

But if it's so ordinary, why did almost every newspaper and media outlet in town splash his comments across their pages and screens?

The timing of his "special interview" is one thing. Why was it put on air on that day, disrupting the normal programming and right in the middle of the election? Why did he choose to talk to only two TV channels, which happened to be owned by the army? What was the urgency?

Of course, the army chief won't clarify these questions. In fact, he's vowed not to utter another word about the election till it's done. But these questions won't go away easily and they have certainly added to the uncertainty factor that has dogged the Thai politics for several years.

That the person giving out these seemingly harmless words of caution is the head of the powerful army is another factor. If there is anybody out there who is capable of staging a coup, it's going to be him. If that "coup-able" person has something to say, the whole country has no choice but to listen.

The whole country does not have to like his comment or the timing of his giving it, though.

It's true Gen Prayuth didn't name any party in his address. One has to read between the lines who he deems as "good people" and who he considers "impolite" or "wrongdoers".

To many analysts, it's not difficult to decode his speech. Reuters, for example, released an analysis that said Gen Prayuth's warning of a repeat of the old situation was "a not-so-subtle reference to a decade of elections won by Thaksin allies" and "a move to discredit Yingluck Shinawatra's Puea Thai Party and stem its momentum following opinion polls that show it is likely to win the most votes in the election".

What the army chief did bring into the election picture, ostensibly although probably without him realising it, is the monarchy.

If the timing of his giving some warning about the election was suspicious, his talking about the institution in this context is even more puzzling.

The army commander spoke at some length about the fact that there are some anti-monarchy elements at work which are bent on harming the throne. He warned the public to guard against these people, two of whom he did actually name. He also emphasised the need for some 40-50 million eligible voters to "come out and vote for change".

"Exercise your conscience and use your sense. Think carefully about your vote. You have to consider how to vote so that the country stays safe, so that the throne stays safe," Gen Prayuth said.

We will never know what the army chief's intention was that prompted him to put the protection of the monarchy into the context of the general election. What we see as a result, however, is in fastening the two issues together, Gen Prayuth could be seen as trying to turn this election into a referendum for the monarchy - an inappropriate and unnecessary move for the military leader.

Nobody is going to dispute the fact that this election holds a key to the future of Thailand - every general election can be a turning point in a country's politics and that is why it is an important event that generates a high level of attention everywhere. Still, an election is not a referendum on any particular person, party or issue and it should not be made to be so.

A general election is a means to select a government "of the people, by the people and for the people". As long as we are in this democracy game, we'd better play by its rules. Gen Prayuth may have his preference when he expressed his wish that voters pick "good people". However, if the people they finally choose are not deemed as "good" by the army chief, he'd have no choice but to respect their will.

What is interesting to me is, while the Election Commission went to such a great length as to bar all political parties from campaigning on the monarchy issue, it's the army chief who eventually brought the issue into the political context himself.

With the country's politics in a state of constant flux for the past many years, Gen Prayuth should have known what a precarious move he was making.

China's damning comments on Thai army's election campaign

20 June 2011 China Daily

The Thai army takes sides as divisive election nears. After Thailand's military removed Yingluck Shinawatra's brother in a bloodless coup on a hot September night five years ago, the front-runner in next month's closely fought election has good reason to fear the generals will go after her.

Recent rumblings from the army suggest she should be concerned.

As Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, surges ahead in the race to become Thailand's next prime minister after elections next month, the army has cast aside its neutrality, analysts say, and looks intent on derailing her. How far they will go is unclear.

If she prevails over Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's ruling Democrat Party and forms a government, a coup is one option, though an unlikely one due to the risk of drawing tens of thousands of Thaksin's "red shirt" supporters into the streets in a reprise of last year's bloody clashes with troops.

Most analysts and diplomats suggest she may cut a deal with the army to preserve her government and to prevent a new round of street riots.

But in the days leading up to the July 3 election, the army is doing what it can to stop her momentum and foil her plans for a general amnesty that would clear the way for Thaksin to return from self-exile in Dubai, where he lives to avoid prison following a graft conviction he says was politically motivated.

Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, instrumental in the coup that toppled Thaksin and offensives to crush anti-government red-shirt street insurrections in 2009 and 2010, made a stern-faced address on two army-owned television channels last week, stressing the military would not meddle in the election.

Contrasting campaigns

20 June 2011

Every picture tells a story. 

Too hot for the Generals

16 June 2011

When it was announced at the beginning of May that Thailand’s main opposition party, Pheu Thai, had picked the young, unknown and politically inexperienced sister of Thaksin Shinawatra to be its candidate for prime minister, some deemed it a silly, even bizarre, idea—not least some within Pheu Thai itself.

A month or so on, however, and the decision is looking like a stroke of genius. Ms Yingluck has taken the campaign by storm, generating enough buzz and excitement to build a handy lead in the polls over the incumbent Democrat Party, led by the prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. There is still something over two weeks to go until election day on July 3rd, but if she keeps up her present pace it’s difficult to imagine the Democrat Party ever clawing its way back across the gap.

So how has Ms Yingluck managed it? To shine a little daylight on the magic, I joined her and her very large team for a day on the campaign trail in Thailand’s deep (and largely Muslim) south. This is not natural Pheu Thai country—their heartland is in the rural north of the country—but she was mobbed nonetheless, even if only by her own supporters.

Of course, being the younger sister of Mr Thaksin gives her instant name recognition. The former prime minister, ousted in a coup in 2006 and now living in a self-imposed exile in Dubai, is the unofficial leader of the party; he picked his sister to lead the campaign because he could count on her loyalty. Ms Yingluck thus has a ready-made bond with the Pheu Thai base, including many of the “red shirts”. They still adore Mr Thaksin and see this whole election campaign as nothing less than a final push to get their hero back to Thailand. Warming to this theme, the egocentric Mr Thaksin was rash enough at the start to describe Ms Yingluck as nothing more than his “clone”. It’s clear, however, that Ms Yingluck is rather more than the family android—and brings to the campaign her own qualities and attributes.

For a start, she is not quite the political ingénue that she seems. Although at 44 years old she has never held public office, she points out that she comes from an intensely political family; her father was an MP for Chiang Mai, their hometown in the north-west, and her brother was prime minister. She studied political science in Thailand and public administration at an American university. Politics, her friends claim, is in the blood.

Moreover, though might be relatively new to the game herself, she has surrounded herself with a very experienced team of older men who have been running her brother’s various campaigns for years. Thus her very appealing freshness, youth and easy-going nature are finely balanced against a hard-nosed, slick and pragmatic campaign that organises every step she takes, every camera angle and every handshake. Not a word or a smile is wasted. As the first woman to run for prime minister in Thailand she also seems to be mobilising women to vote for the party. Her youthfulness appeals to the Facebook generation.

In sum, the naturalness and easy manner that Thais appreciate in Ms Yingluck is authentic—but the fact that it comes over so well is the result of a lot of sweat and forethought. I have covered many campaigns now both in rich and in developing countries, and Ms Yingluck’s campaign is among the best choreographed and organised that I’ve seen. And, of course, it helps enormously that she is pretty (“hot” in Thai political-science jargon) and has a big smile—which is just the sort of thing that newspaper editors look for to brighten up their front page every morning.

The Democrat Party grumbles that it’s just a circus, that in reality she is merely a lightweight and wholly unqualified to run the country. Which, of course, might well be true—but it misses the point entirely. She is the perfect early 21st-century political candidate, a beautiful fit for the modern mass media: telegenic, charismatic and very easy for voters to relate to. Her stump speech is short and to the point, just endlessly hammering home a few key populist economic policies that everyone can remember (free tablet PCs for school kids, rise in minimum wage, etc), and then it’s back to loving the camera.

The Democrats, led by Oxford-educated technocrats, argue that their own economic message is, by contrast, deep and meaningful. Maybe, but they have failed to encapsulate it in slogans or phrases that people can pick up on. In truth, they have been completely wrong-footed by Ms Yingluck. At party headquarters all their managers hope for is that the Yingluck whirlwind will blow itself out (“the novelty will wear off”), after which they can then subject her half-baked policies to the scrutiny that they deserve. But by that time, I suspect, the election itself will be virtually upon us. In other words, they are out of time.

Even the army, her elder brother’s main foe, now seems to be taking the prospect of a Yingluck government seriously. Rattled by her success perhaps, the army chief General Chan-ocha appeared on TV on June 14th to urge people to vote for “good people” come July 3rd. The army of course organised the coup against Mr Thaksin in 2006 and are widely considered to have had a hand in putting together the present Democrat-led government; the general was interpreted by some as warning the electorate against voting Pheu Thai. Ms Yingluck has promised to be conciliatory towards the army and her brother’s other “establishment” opponents, if she is elected—but by any measure this seemed to be a considerable provocation.

Winning the election will be one thing, it seems, while actually being allowed to form a government could be quite another. For the moment however it is Ms Yingluck enjoying the “big mo”, as the Americans call it. Someday soon she might even prove too hot for the generals to handle.

Vancouver's predictable disgrace

16 June 2011

Win or lose there was always going to be trouble in Vancouver last night. It would have been the same in Toronto in the unlikely event that the Maple Leafs ever get that far. There is something in the Canadian DNA. That unfortunate sense of moral superiority which allows Canadians to laud it over their American neighbours.

But it is nonsense.

It happens in part due to excessive tolerance. In part due to denial. You will wake up in the morning to hear that it was just a few hundred trouble makers - not so there were thousands rioting. You will hear it is nothing to do with the hockey. Nonsense. Violence begets violence.

But walk down Robson road on a summer weekend. Loud. Gangs. Sometimes threatening.

Booze of course contributes.

But this is not the world class city in a world class country.

The clean up will be expensive; the police costs huge. And the taxpayer, who in Canada is already excessively burdened, will pay.

The hockey result really does not matter now; Vancouver lost. But it lost far more than a game of hockey.

This is how the Province newspaper reported the riots in real time. The pictures tell the story.

Matthew Good, who is a Vancouver resident writes in today's Guardian using this headline - "The pointless riots that followed the Canucks' defeat make a mockery of Vancouver's claims to be a world-class city."

He continues:

"Last night the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final. An estimated 100,000 people were in the downtown core to take part in festivities – a number that far surpasses those that flooded the city in 1994. If you weren't a resident of Vancouver that fateful night 17 years ago then you have absolutely no frame of reference regarding the impact it had on the people of the city, most of whom had nothing to do with the riot, and the utter embarrassment that it caused. Broadcast live to the continent on CNN, scenes of morons smashing windows, looting stores, and confronting police were shown repeatedly for days afterwards.

I walked up Robson from Denman the next morning and it looked like a running gun battle had taken place sans the buildings being branded by bullet scars. It was an absolute disgrace.

The night before, I'd made my way down Robson, and then through the backstreets in the West End, just before all hell broke loose up at the intersection at Thurlow. Arriving home, I turned on the television and found myself watching events unfold mere blocks from my apartment. When the tear gas was fired, clouds of it rolled west down the slope forcing many of us to close our windows.

While what unfolded that night disgraced the city, and revealed it to be far more a backwater fishing village that a world-class city, what is currently transpiring on the streets of Vancouver is set to do far more damage to the city's reputation. And that's the hard, cold, truth of it, no matter how cosmopolitan you believe this city to now be. If the Olympics succeeded in charming the pants off the world, that warm, fuzzy feeling has now been decimated.

I'm in no mood to start slicing pies. Whether you like it or not, what's happening right now will be viewed as a representation of the city as a whole – not merely a handful of people. And even then, it's not just a handful of people. Of course, alcohol has a great deal to do with it. When you mix booze with idiocy and an excuse to parade incivility what do you honestly expect, a spontaneous love-in?

Cars have been set on fire – on the streets and in parking garages. Police cars have been flipped and torched. Stores have been looted and set on fire. Enough city trash bins have been set ablaze that if one didn't know better they'd think they were in a Hoover-Ville.

Beyond those directly responsible for causing damage, there's throngs of bystanders milling around like idiots filming it all on their digital phones – like it'll be some sort of keepsake. In the midst of it all are members of the Vancouver Police and Fire Departments who are outnumbered and, from what I've seen thus far, doing their best to keep their cool. That could change, mind you, and if it does I'm not sure that I'd really blame them.

There is a vast difference between gathering in such numbers to protest something deemed politically unacceptable and burning cars after the loss of a hockey game. To put it in the clearest context possible, if the people of Egypt were able to gather in much larger numbers and force the Mubarak regime out of power without acting like idiots, then what does that say about a city in the land of milk and honey in which people riot because of the loss of a sporting event? The Egyptians faced persecution for their actions, not to mention uncertainty as to whether the movement would succeed. That's bravery, and something to be applauded. And yet, here we are on the other side of the world acting like buffoons, lighting police cars on fire and causing such distention that emergency service vehicles can't even access the downtown core to deal with people that have sustained injuries.

What do you want me to say? That it doesn't represent the city as a whole because everyone from the downtown core to the Wally exchange wasn't directly involved? That's a nice thought, though wondrously short-sighted. What do you think the national media is going to be saying? Or, for that matter, foreign media? That it was just a small group of rabble-rousers? Or that, once again, Vancouver rioted after a Stanley Cup loss as if it's tradition.

The last thing I care to hear is some 20-something that's lived downtown for four months lecture me on the "realities of the city". I lived in the downtown core for almost two decades, I'm quite familiar with it – and unlike some naive scenester that can't find their own ass with two hands and a flashlight most of the time, I know full well what this unrest will ultimately cost taxpayers. You can think what you will about Greater Vancouver, but its core mentality hasn't changed all that much. No amount of trendy eateries, hip night spots, and upscale retailers is going to change the fact that if you give most of the idiots around here enough rope, they'll hang themselves and think it cool.

Save up for Faye

15 June 2011

Yes. Faye Wong is going to Singapore. But her one night concert comes with a price. It has the most expensive tickets for a Mandopop gig in the Lion City to date.

Going on sale on July 1, the tickets for her gig at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on October 29 start at $120 and go up to $580.

A total of 5,000 tickets will be available, with 60 per cent priced at $280 and below. The first-tier VIP tickets at $580 each are limited to 500.

China-born pop diva Wong, 41, who is famous for her crystal-clear voice and stylish image, is also known for her reticence in public. She withdrew from the public eye in 2005 after her second marriage but returned to the entertainment industry last year amid much hype and excitement. The last time she performed here was in 2004.

She will also play in Kuala Lumpur on November 6, 2011 at 8:00 pm at the Bukit Jalil Indoor Stadium.

Sadly there appear to be no Dubai dates!

Dubai tempts once again but dangers still lurk

15 June 2011- Reuters

"Dubai is back in business, or at least on its way to repairing an image devastated by a debt crisis.

Less than three years ago foreign investors turned their backs on Dubai, the tiny desert city-state with grand ambitions built on massive debt, after state-conglomerate Dubai World announced it would restructure about $25 billion in debt.

But now, Dubai's flagship airline has successfully marketed a $1 billion bond, hotels have attracted thousands more guests and unrest across the Middle East has persuaded some businesses to move some their offices to the more stable emirate.

"At one point I had investors tell me they didn't want Dubai at all in their portfolios," said a banker.

But the success of Emirates bond this month, attracting orders of over $6 billion, is one of the clearest signs yet of returning confidence and served to show the airline's importance to Dubai's economy and international image.

"Being able to get any airline debt away in a world with $100 plus crude oil prices, the biggest component of an airline's costs, is impressive," said Daniel Broby, chief investment officer of U. K. based asset manager Silk Invest.

"The fact that it was a Dubai-based airline is even more impressive."

Emirates priced its bond on the same day that global ports operator DP World (DPW.DI), another of Dubai's prized possessions, made its debut on the London Stock Exchange.

"The DP World listing and Emirates bond are the sort of instruments to show that Dubai has returned," said Saj Ahmad, analyst at FBE Aerospace in London.

Appetite for Dubai debt has been rising in recent months, and CDS levels have sunk back to pre-2009 crisis levels.

Not only is the Dubai government planning to issue new bonds this week after a London investor roadshow, but it recently announced an extension of its bond programme to $5 billion.

The pick-up in sentiment is a far cry from November 2009, when Dubai World's plan to restructure about $25 billion in debt sent investors fleeing practically overnight and translated into negative growth for the once high-flying economy.

There is also an unavoidable sense of optimism. In 2010, Dubai's GDP per capita was just under $42,000, one of the highest in the world.

Driven by trade, financial services and tourism, Dubai's economy recovered in 2010 with 2.4 percent growth and is projected to expand by another 3 to 3.5 percent this year.

In contrast, the World Bank expects 1.9 percent growth in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.

Cranes are purring back to life and tourists are flocking back to Dubai's delights such as a ski slope in the desert, one of the world's largest shopping malls and its tallest tower.

In the first quarter, hotel guests numbered more than 1.8 million, a 14 percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to the Dubai Statistics Center.

"With the so-called Arab Spring shutting down other major tourists markets in the region, notably Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, tourists flocked to Dubai," said Guy Wilkinson, managing partner at Viability Managements Consultants, a hospitality consultancy based in Dubai.

Businesses and capital inflows into Dubai -- though hard to quantify accurately -- have also increased largely because of political uncertainty in Bahrain, a well established financial hub in the region, money managers and bank executives say.

Many companies have shifted offices or staff to the city, while UAE bank deposits climbed to their highest level in at least more than two years in April.

"Companies are physically moving to Dubai -- for some, the regional unrest is an opportunity to have a reasonably large presence in Dubai," said Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global Associates and senior analyst at Political Capital.

Nuseibeh said it was too soon to gauge whether the liquidity at banks and people moving to Dubai would have any impact on a recovery in the real estate sector -- one of the worst affected by the crisis.

But he said between 30 and 50 percent of businesses which relocate to Dubai would remain on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.

On Dubai's streets, conversations once more centre on eating out at the latest restaurant and watching pop acts like Usher, Macy Gray and Joe Cocker who have all played to packed houses.

But Dubai has been accused of storing up its troubles by postponing debt payments rather than resolving them. Dubai World's 2010 debt deal delays repayment to after five and eight years, and no Dubai asset sales have yet been announced.

The emirate faces about $30 billion in redemptions over the coming two years and refinancing risk remains one of the biggest investor concerns. Issues of creditors taking over assets and enforceability are extremely politically sensitive.

"A lot of debt restructuring was for five years or seven to eight years," said Monica Malik, chief economist at EFG-Hermes.

"While this gave a sort of breathing space in the shorter term, you still have the issue to try to reduce these debts in the medium term."

Despite a recovery in global trade and more stability in the banking and property sectors, Dubai's economic expansion is far behind growth rates seen during the oil and property-fuelled boom years before the global credit crunch struck in 2008.

The size of the emirate's economy shrunk by 14 percent in 2009, and the overall debt load of Dubai and its companies is estimated at $115 billion or 140 percent of its economic output, not far below 143 percent for debt-troubled Greece.

UAE private sector credit growth has been anaemic, at a mere 2.0 percent in February, compared with annual rates of well over 50 percent in 2008, when a construction frenzy peaked. Increased deposits have so far failed to kick-start lending.

But Dubai's saving grace -- once again -- may prove to be the widely-help assumption that neighbouring Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven emirates, will be ready to shoulder the burden if, and when, required."

'Thailand Must Be United Again'

15 June 2011 SPIEGEL Interview with Thaksin Shinawatra

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra now lives in exile in Dubai. Sentenced in Thailand to two years in prison for abuse of office, Thaksin hopes his younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, will become the country's new prime minister in July so he can return home. He talks to SPIEGEL about past mistakes and his country's political future.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.
Many consider Thaksin Shinawatra to be phantom-like. For some time, few knew the former Thai prime minister's whereabouts. At one point the 62-year-old was seen in the Balkans, and then later in Russia. He was spotted in Uganda, South Africa, and repeatedly in Switzerland. Most of the time it appears that Thaksin, who is now a citizen of Montenegro and possesses a Nicaraguan diplomatic passport, resides in Dubai. There, he has a snow-white mansion in the wealthy Emirates Hills district. A Jaguar and a Lexus are parked in front of his home.

The Thai army leadership and the current government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva would like nothing better than to arrest Thaksin. The military drove the popular politician, who was elected three times, out of office in 2006. He was later sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of office, and the state confiscated about €1 billion of his assets. But Thaksin evaded arrest and left for London. Thailand is set to hold its next parliamentary election on July 3. There is a strong chance that Thaksin's sister Yingluck, 43, will become the country's next prime minister if the military doesn't intervene.

In an interview with SPIEGEL, former Prime Minister Thaksin discusses his sister's candidacy in parliamentary elections and the prospects for reconciliation in Thailand.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Thaksin, the political fronts in your home country appear to be unchanged. On the one side you have the so-called 'yellow shirts', the supporters of the government; on the other you have the 'red shirts,' their opponents. They have positioned your sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, as their candidate in the upcoming parliamentary election. Will she soon be leading Thailand?

Thaksin: All the polls have her ahead. But I am seriously worried about her. The political culture in Thailand is very violent. We are sure the government will try to rig the elections to prevent her from winning.

SPIEGEL: Whose idea was it to get your sister to run?

Thaksin: We decided together: The entire family, the party, and of course, she herself. We thought long and hard about who the right person would be to lead our Pheu Thai Party into the elections, but in the end we kept coming back to her.

SPIEGEL: Few people are willing to believe you. Many think you decided it all by yourself and are simply using her as a tool.

Thaksin: No matter who the candidate was, my political opponents would claim I was using them. Even if Prime Minister Abhisit suddenly decided to join our party, they would still claim I had instrumentalized him.

SPIEGEL: What makes Yingluck a particularly suitable candidate for the post? She doesn't have any political experience.

Thaksin: That is precisely her advantage. After the military coup of 2006 and last year's military deployment against the opposition, with more than 90 dead, what the country needs more than anything else is reconciliation. A person, who up until now has had nothing to do with politics, is especially well suited for that. Yingluck doesn't have any political baggage weighing her down. She is also a successful businesswoman who is used to leading a large organization.

SPIEGEL: You have eight sisters, but you're apparently especially close to Yingluck.

Thaksin: That is true. She's my youngest sister. My mother was always very close to her. Unfortunately, my mother died very young. Before she died, she asked me to take special care of Yingluck. So that's what I did. I raised her like my own daughter. I sent her to school in the United States, and when she returned to Thailand after college, she got a low-level job at one of my companies. She was excellent and quickly rose to become the head of my telecommunications company AIS. We have the same way of thinking, the same DNA.

SPIEGEL: Are you afraid there will be another military putsch if your sister wins?

Thaksin: I hope the elections will be free and fair, even though the military is already exerting an immense influence. But I hope our lead will be so great that even this government will be unable to manipulate the election.

SPIEGEL: Would you call on your supporters to demonstrate if you thought the elections were being rigged?

Thaksin: We're trying to prevent that. We do not want revenge, but rather to offer the hand of reconciliation to our opponents. The country must be united again. That's something the current government hasn't addressed, and that's also why it has no chance of winning the election.

SPIEGEL: Will reconciliation include an amnesty for all those who were responsible for the killing last spring?

Thaksin: If there is evidence, then there must also be fair trials. But first we must do everything to get the facts out on the table, no matter which political party a person belongs to. By that I mean the red shirts and yellow shirts as well as military personnel.

SPIEGEL: Were you surprised by the tepid international response to the military action? After all, there was plenty of evidence that soldiers also fired live rounds at unarmed demonstrators.

Thaksin: I recently read that an arrest warrant has been issued for Moammar Gadhafi for ordering his troops to use live ammunition and deployed both snipers and tanks against protesters. Abhisit also did all that. But Thailand has no oil, and the government is good at lying.

SPIEGEL: When you were prime minister, you weren't the perfect democrat either. You stand accused of serious human rights violations.

Thaksin: I accept this criticism. We made mistakes, particularly in the war on drugs ...

SPIEGEL: ... during which thousands of people are believed to have been killed.

Thaksin: Perhaps my expectations were too dramatic. I wanted something to happen. I wanted to scare those criminals, to send them a warning. But I never personally ordered anybody to be killed. I'm a Buddhist, and I believe that those who kill will be killed themselves in their next life. When I was prime minister, people even came up to me and asked me if they should get rid of my opponent, the liar Sondhi Limthongkul. I was very powerful at that time, but I said, "That's out of the question. I don't want anyone to be killed, not even Sondhi Limthongkul."

SPIEGEL: You are said to have bought votes.

Thaksin: You can't buy votes. Sure, you can give someone 500 baht, about 10 euros, and tell him to vote for you, but if he doesn't like you, he'll put a cross next to somebody else's name when he's in the polling booth. 500 baht won't buy you food for four years. As a politician, you have to keep your promises, otherwise you won't be reelected. And I was always reelected.

SPIEGEL: What about the allegations that you paid Red Shirt demonstrators to take to the streets last year?

Thaksin: You can't pay anyone to go out and get shot at. That's nonsense. In any case, I have less than half as much money as I had at the start of the 1990s; barely a billion. A little is left over from the sale of my soccer club, Manchester City. So it is not true that I enriched myself. In fact, I was robbed.

SPIEGEL: So you don't bankroll the Pheu Thai Party, the political home of the Red Shirts?

Thaksin: No. I have friends who do that. I can't even transfer any money from over here. But don't underestimate the willingness of ordinary Thais to donate money.

SPIEGEL: The most controversial law in Thailand at the moment seems to be Article 112, which makes it a criminal offense to insult the monarchy. It is currently being used en masse to muzzle the government's political rivals.

Thaksin: Lots of people are being thrown in prison because of it, and even foreigners are being charged.

SPIEGEL: When you were prime minister, many critics of the monarchy were also convicted.

Thaksin: When you're in power, you can sometimes fall for the temptation to use this power. However, the king talked me out of it.

SPIEGEL: Why won't the king step in and sort things out now?

Thaksin: He is very old and sick, and he's surrounded by the wrong people.

SPIEGEL: Why won't you return to Thailand to face justice?

Thaksin: I would if I could be guaranteed a fair trial. But there's no way that I, my family and my supporters can expect justice at the present time.

SPIEGEL: That's why you are enjoying the security of your exile. Things look to be going well for you here in Dubai.

Thaksin: I'm often in Africa where I've invested in gold mines in Uganda, in platinum and coal in South Africa and Zimbabwe and Tanzania. I buy concessions and have people look for mineral deposits. Many big investors are reluctant to get involved because they are scared of the political instability and crime. I'm a newcomer as far as minerals are concerned, so the African continent is ideal.

SPIEGEL: You speculate in commodities...

Thaksin: I'm hyperactive. I can't sit quietly or stay in one place. Ten months ago I bought myself a plane, and I spend an average of about two-and-a-half hours a day in the air. Only recently, I was in Geneva to meet some friends and have a good meal. I also travel to Russia very often to meet my old friend, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. When I'm on the plane, I go on Skype and organize my business.

SPIEGEL: You are clearly not missing Thailand very much.

Thaksin: I missed Thailand greatly in the first year. In the meantime, I have a lot of people who visit me here, friends and relatives. They bring me sausages from Chiang Mai and curry from Chonburi. That's how I can get by. Nevertheless, I would like to be in Thailand again in December when my oldest daughter gets married. By that time my sister may be ruling the country.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Thaksin, we thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Thilo Thielke.