Although Thaksin's policies have violated human rights and caused many deaths, he, in offering friendship and business partnership with Hun Sen, has promoted peace and challenged a long history of Thai racism against the Khmer people.

To be fair, the Thai government should seek for the extradition of a few other Thai fugitives now living in Cambodia as well, at least 2 of which did not involve with politics as cited by Cambodia in the case of Thaksin.

Is there anyone from the Cambodians around having a word to say?
Should we consider Thaksin as a political fugitive or e criminal on the run? If Thaksin was a criminal then Thai government can use the Interpol to capture Thaksin. What is he? If not then the Cambodian might have done the right thing to harbor Thansin a political figure, which meant Thailand has little democracy and their current government is a puppet of the monarch?

Thaksin won his election by a majority, you cannot called him garbage, and if you do then Thai democracy was also garbage.
The King does get a lot of respects from the people of Thailand and an insult to the Royal could head to jail for 12 months or more, and defend on who you are too.
The King is very much a Dictator to Democracy.

Whatever one might think of Thaksin - the phrase "Thailand's Berlusconi" springs to mind - he and/or his party have three times been elected to run Thailand. The king and his chums have corrupted the cause of democracy in Thailand.

Thaksin is very much a Robin-hood Family Politian served ‘the poorer’ Thais people well. His problem was he wanted more power from the people for the people and not too much from some sort of monarch supervision and that what he got as a result. Also explained why the yellow and the red T shirts got everything to a stand still for months in Thailand. They love their King and cannot decide their stand on democracy.
Thailand recent politics decision toward their neighbour country was unacceptable and particularly, the recent tried bullying on the Cambodian over land the near temple, which an international court has, favored part of Cambodia in the 60’s. It took the Thais that long to realize that it was theirs too. The Cambodian has had wars, they did pretty well and I hope the Thais should be careful.
If the monarch got what they want then Mr. Thanksin should be allowed to return to Thailand whenever he chooses and leave whenever if he wanted.

Dear EdwinTran,
I am Cambodian and I am here to answer your question. I consider Thaksin as a complex political victim. For Thaksin is being an economic adviser for Cambodia is such an honor. He is a very smart man and I believe he can help cambodia to get out from poverty. We khmer people need to get new ideas from other and I think it is a key to open the door. I regret that thai people don't see Thaksin's potential. Don't you think it is abit scary to visit Thailand?. people can't saying anything about royal family in Thailand. Lese Majeaste law in Thailand is outrageous. In Cambodia, people can still criticize royal and goverment and also on sensitive issues. Freedom of speech in cambodia is way better than Thailand.

this appointment seems to be big coup for Mr Thaksin. If Thailand's neighbours do not recognize his conviction who else in the world will? Maybe UK or US only who always need pliant Thai military and jailmen to torture terror suspects?

Thai rulers need to understand that democracy comes not from scrupulous following of many rules and regulations which applied incidentally to political opponents only but to the culture of consensus.

Here in India the Supreme Court is waging battle against Mayawati, upstart low caste politician who is fond of erecting her own statues on public money. However nobody believes that she will be convicted of misuse of public funds. Because in democratic system people use courts just to correct politicians, not to jail them or throw them into exile.

Then India is big country that intense rivalries in states like Tamil Nadu (where Jayalalitha and Karunanindhi used to throw rivals in jail) do not affect the whole democratic nature of the country. Unfortunately Thailand is too small country with long history of suppression of dissent.

I am sorry everyone, but Thaksin's economic policies were disastrous. I will give you some ideas:

1. His universal health care policy under the name of "30 baht (US$1) cure EVERY disease" was highly unsustainable. You think US$1 can cure cancer or even a simple cold? You would have gone to Clinic before; just try to calculate how much subsidies a person will get a year. The calculator would possibly hit its limit. True that policies give back to the poor, but what did he do to the country? Using a huge amount of budget to "give out" to the poor won't help them in the long term. They will even be more dependent on the government, incurring even higher debt to Thailand.

2. He had this policy called "one million baht (US$30000) per village." He simply gave out that amount of money to each village without any predetermined use whatsoever. Does this help the poor people? Does handing out a large sum of money will help them? Yeah, for ten days of luxurious meals..

These are some of the examples of his policies. Please check the facts if you need to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policies_of_the_Shinawatra_administration

He used the government money for his populist policies. Imagine you are living under US$10 a day then suddenly a government says "Okay, we will have a new policy that will earn you US$30." What would you do in next election? Of course, vote for him! This is what happened in Indonesia under Suharto. The corruption in Suharto government topped one of the richest man in Indonesia.

Yes, I agree that some of his policies are good for country like OTOP. But does using government budget to get your votes and make the lower-class dependent, so that he will be in power longer to corrupt more sound right to you? The progress that he gives to Thailand does not top the drawbacks. I think I rather have a partially democratic country than see my country economy, in a long run, suffer tremendously from a short-sighted policies.

Dear ThBillet
What is meaning of democracy in Thailand? According to wikipedia, Thaksin won in January 2001 elections, the first election held under the People's Constitution of 1997. It was called the most open, corruption-free election in Thai history. I understand that some of his policies is not good for the country but the majority of Thai people had agreeed to vote for him. The current goverment of Thailand has been robbing power from people. Is coup the only way to sovle problem in Thailand? I think Thailand give a bad message to the world. Thaksin might had done many bad things but the majority of thais people had voted for him and it is the end of story. I feel the current goverment in Thailand is like a play ground. One of example: Thailand had terminated MoU with Cambodia, just because Cambodia had appointed Thaksin as our economic adviser. It means if someone don't agree with Thailand, Thailand will revoke or terminate the agreement. Another example: Preah Vihear is belong to Cambodia and it had build by Khmer King and the international court found that the Temple of Preah Vihear was situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia. It represent Khmer people's identity and soul. After 60 years, suddenly some Thai people don't agree with it. Do you think is it fair with Khmer people? Khmer people do not repect Judicial System in Thailand because Thailand had violated the International Law in 1991 by letting Khmer Roughe into Thailand. Cambodia Views Thaksin as a political victim and I guess the current goverment of Thailand has to live with the decision.

ThBillet

and the answer is... Thaksins policies were not disastrous, they were excellent and promoted Thailand toward a world class economy... precisely because he gave the poor people the chance to boost their own fortunes, dramatic reduction in poverty, and their performance enabled his government to realise surpluses and build infrastructure that the country is still enjoying!

thanks for the reference to Thaksins policies in Wikipaedia its a good statement laced with the inevitable snide and jealous remarks emanating from the yellow shirted elites

for your info here is my summary of Thaksins recent talk... (note the story of the tree)

watched Thaksin economics speech to the Cambodians live on PeopleTV
(www.thaipeoplevoice.org)

He addressed a capacity crowd of about 300 including the Deputy PM,
government bureaucrats and private industry with a sprinkling of
farangs, one introduced himself as a lawyer resident in Cambodia.

He spoke confidently and lucidly in english covering global, Asian and local Thai and Cambodian economies. He had preliminary specific advice and priorities for his hosts. and promised to work with smaller groups on details for a strategic plan.

He discussed his experiences as PM in Thailand with the Village Fund,
OTOP, 30Baht Health, etc and said that the work by the King and Queen in their Self Sufficiency and Demonstration Farms was valuable in enabling implementation and spread of these ideas across the villages in Thailand. In answer to questions he noted that the present Thai
government does not have a vision and philosophy to underpin their
copies of his policies, calling them populous rather than targetting
them for the long term benefit of the people.

For the audience he described his approach as capitalist rather than
socialist and provided a cautionary tale of the scorpion and the turtle, in capitalism you should cooperate for mutual win-win benefit but always recognise the risks and protect yourself from being stung as it is the nature of capitalists to compete and take advantage of opponents.

He described developing countries as selling labour and tears (small
returns for effort), semi developed as value adding with creative input and developed countries as having high leverage in making paper worth more than effort. India and China have attracted their creative people back home and are increasing their creative input rapidly.

For me the highlight was his simple and meaningful simile of the economy of a country as a tree, where the poor and workers are the roots, rising to the middle class and those at the top. The performance of the economy is most dependent on the health and well-being of the roots. If you water the top of the tree you must use a lot of water to get benefit. If you water the roots the top of the tree must wait to get the benefit and they can cause trouble for a government as happened to him. It is important to focus on the roots but at least spray the top and the middle so that a government can stay in office long enough to benefit the country.

IamKhmer

I think i did not address the point that what the government did is correct. I think you miss the point of my comment. I am not backing them up. I know what we Thai government did is sometimes wrong.

But my issue was about the economy. Thaksin's economic policies were populist policies and do not help people in a long term.

I totally agree that by all means Thaksin was democratically elected; so do Suharto and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The majority votes for them because of his populist policies. Then where do they bring the country? I don't know; may be Thaksin will bring a revolution, but from history, Suharto did no do much good to Indonesia. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is some kind of dictator. I am not sure we want to take such risk.

Nevertheless, the current government is not in Thai Law undemocratically elected. Since long ago, Prime Ministers of Thailand are chosen by the Parliament. The people choose their representatives and the representative choose their leaders. Most of the time it's the party with majority vote, but it can be otherwise. It is still democracy in Thai context. We do not choose our Prime Minister directly.

davidb98

I do agree with you that we must help the poor, but I do not think his policies are the way to go. I do not think giving out money for free will help them boost their fortune. Policies such as Singapore's CPF or educating them may be the way to go. Those are long term, not giving money for free or using highly subsidised health care. Britain tried such policy few decades ago and it was a full of problems; high budget deficit, long queue of waiting and low quality services. Helping the poor means to teach them how to fish not giving them fish.

I am sure his speech is flawless. But does it mean a lot.. I am not sure. In speech, you can say anything you want people to hear, what is the right. That is what political speech is all about right?

My whole point is not to back the government up, don't get me wrong. I am commenting on Thaksin's policies that they do not help the country in a long run, although in a short run it help the poor.

It is like putting too much water at the root, not letting the tree grow so that it learn how to find its own source of water. Sure the tree might flourish for awhile, but what will happen when the water in the hand runs out. Most of the roots won't be able to find their own source of water. That is when the problems come.

Cambodia has given Thaksin an opportunity to prove his ability and skills to world. I can't argue now about his policies and we will see in the long run. Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, Thaksin was the man who helped Thailand to get from crisis. I have strong believe that he will be able to help Cambodia out from poverty.

ThBillet and others:

You can't describe Thaksin's policies as disastrous for the country; your understanding of Thailand's rural poor is quite shallow. Thailand's income inequality has been on the increase dramatically since 1975.

While Thaksin's policies were on the brash side, they were appropriate and forward-thinking policies given the past patterns in Thailand.

The rural poor did not spend village aid money on getting luxurious meals, read this article: http://www.cid.harvard.edu/neudc07/docs/neudc07_s3_p08_boonperm.pdf

Mostly this fund as well as some of Thaksin's other programs strengthened Thailand's vital agricultural economy.

The main spur for Thaksin's ejection was his sale of Shincorp. People popularly believe that Shincorp sale was a form of tax evasion, but in fact it was fully compliant with Thai tax law; what it infringed was a law putting a cap on foreign investment.

This violation may have justified his ejection from power, but largely his ejection was fueled by the radical royalist yellow shirt uprising.

The yellow shirts are the urban elite. These are the people who spend exorbitant amounts of money on luxurious meals and classist fashions. The money that Thaksin redirected was largely spent by rural poor on things like agricultural improvements, or at worst on motorcycles and cell phones. These programs haven't crippled Thailand's economy, they've brought opportunity for the poor and increased Thailand's supply of talent.

The yellow shirt uprising and all its ripples have mainly stirred fractious politics, wasted energy, and vilified Thailand's liberal politicians.

Not commenting the political issues between Thailand and Cambodia, it just seems to be a dumb move for a smart person in Mr. Thaksin.

To jessadawharton:
Thank you for bring out the point, finally someone speak out for Thaksin. I read his economic and education policies, I thought it was amazing. It was not a dumb move for Thaksin to become economic advisor in Cambodia. I believe he enjoys every minute of it. It is a pay back time to the current government of Thailand and also he can refreshing his brain. Since Thailand does not want Thaksin, Cambodia will always be there for him.

to Thbillet,
I have nothing against your or anything, I respect your conclusion that Thaksin's policy will dive Thailand into chaos and what not, its your opinion, but you also have to respect the others' opinion that Thaksin's policies were indeed a successful one and that many people has benefit from it and thus people elect him for his policies. It is unfair for you to say that because his policies are populist therefore it is consider as vote buying, then every leaders in every country is as guilty of the same accusation, then what a leader suppose to do to get elected again?
Moreover, your logic of saying "Helping the poor means to teach them how to fish not giving them fish." is not the point here, I do firmly believe that all of our poor Thais farmers know how to fish but they dont have equipment to do so, its more like "you give the pole and bate for the poor so they can fish" since you cant fish with bare hand and that is what Thaksin actually did, he gave the poor a pole and bate so they can catch a fish.

As always an succinct summary of the issues but surely not so offensive as to justify the removal of numerous pages from the Thai print edition subscribers finally received this morning? I think I prefer the nice email and the offer to add an issue to the back end of my subscription. Isn't it time the publishers in Thailand got a backbone?

I have been to Bangkok on a few occasions and saw many proud statuses on the main entrance to the King Palace and others indicating the Thais people have fought for righteousness and democracy from a very humble background and democracy movement has always be part of the Thais people. All of a certain Thais became a puppet and an Asian superpower by bullying Cambodia. I do not know how the Thais going to prove themselves as Asian power.

Looking at the number of comments and the number of persons who wrote them, I am quite certain that there are very few people reading this article. This is not a surprise because Thais in general don’t care much about Thaksin or Hun Sen or Cambodia. They are concerned with improving their living conditions and other issues. And they don’t believe that either Thaksin or Hun Sen or Cambodia is the answers to their concerns. In fact Thai people are fed up with politicians. A few years ago, a branch of a foreign bank in Bangkok did a research. They wanted to know who the people trusted. It came out the people trusted politicians the least. There were 2 institutions people trusted much more. In a recent survey, people said that they lose faith in the political system altogether. This is not a surprise either given the belief among Thais that politicians are the most corrupt. Even some Thai academics can not avoid this fact and come out to say some things bad about Thai politics which is quite unusual. They usually support the politicians who get erected, no matter how. One professor said that even vote buying was democratic. There might be other Thai academics who believe the same thing but are not willing to say so in the public. But Thai people now don’t believe any more that election equals democracy. They don’t sit idle while elected politicians do whatever they please. They have their own definition for democracy. And Thai academics can not do anything about it. And they now don’t believe that the media, either Thai or foreign, can give balanced views and present total truth.
Whether Thaksin and Hun Sen unite for themselves or for their countries remains to be seen. But in a recent article published by a foreign media, Hun Sen was said to pocket money paid by foreign company for a concession to do business in Cambodia. My friend who plays golf told me that Hun Sen bought 3 sets of best golf clubs from a shop in Thailand. This could be true. In a documentary film, the Cambodians have very little hope to improve their livelihood in the foreseeable future. This demonstrates how competence Hun Sen is. It looks like both Thaksin and Hun Sen can not prove beyond reasonable doubt that they do this for their own countries. A Thai engineer has been accused and arrested by Cambodia as being spy. Thaksin or his nominee would try to convince Cambodia to set him free even without any mentioning of the trial.
I personally pay very little to what the media say about Thailand because we who live here for the whole life really know what really have happened here. There are millions of foreigners visiting the country every year. Foreign businesses want to operate here. A lot of foreigners especially the Westerners already settle down here. They don’t think of getting out of this country. In fact more firms want increase their investments. That’s what matter more to Thais, regardless of what the media or the academics or Thaksin or Hun Sen say about Thailand.

Prichar