In Hong Kong and Singapore, Thaksin Shinawatra prepares his party for elections in Thailand
The self-exiled former prime minister and kingmaker looks ready to lead his Pheu Thai back to power from abroad – but the ruling junta has other plans as it seeks to retain control of the country at the polls
Post-coup elections are on the horizon in Thailand, and Thaksin Shinawatra, the fugitive former prime minister, appears raring to reprise his kingmaker role put on hold by the ruling junta.
Thaksin’s sister Yingluck, prime minister and Pheu Thai leader at the time of the 2014 coup, is also a fugitive from the country and was travelling with her brother.
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Pheu Thai on Thursday downplayed the meetings as Lunar New Year courtesy calls, but political observers say they are the latest sign that Thaksin will remotely spearhead campaigning ahead of polls the ruling generals have promised to hold early next year.
The “semi-public” nature of the meetings meanwhile suggests a degree of muscle-flexing by the still-popular Pheu Thai amid rising public pressure against the junta over corruption allegations, analysts say. The party is the latest iteration of a two-decade-old political mass movement moulded by Thaksin from among the country’s rural poor.
The meetings in Hong Kong and Singapore, publicised by Pheu Thai leaders who met Thaksin, are a means to show his rural base that the party is still “his party, and not the party of some run-of-the-mill politician”, said Patrick Jory, a Thai politics researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia.