Thailand's immediate political future may swing on a ruling by the Thai Supreme Court today on whether to confiscate the equivalent of US$2.3 billion belonging to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The consensus among financiers is that this sum represents the bulk of Thaksin's remaining assets. If, as widely expected, the court deprives him of much of this money, his political potency could well diminish in time as his ability to fund 'popular' protests, and his proxy political opposition party, shrivels.
'If he loses this money the political dynamic will change. The people [who support Thaksin] who dislike the arrogant elite will still feel angry, but Thaksin himself will shrink as a force. It will signal the start of his decline,' said a former close associate and a senior minister in an early Thaksin cabinet. Like most people interviewed for this article, he wishes to remain anonymous.
Without significant financial resources, Thaksin may struggle to cause the tremendous political ructions necessary to overturn his October 2008 conviction by the Supreme Court for abuse of power and the two-year jail term it imposed for the crime. No criminal conviction has yet been overturned for political reasons in Thailand. Thaksin has been a fugitive since then.
This may explain why the former prime minister warned in a video address to supporters on Monday from an undisclosed location that the country would be engulfed by chaos if 'justice does not happen' in court. His earlier, politically risky flirtations with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen and his unprecedented attacks on advisers to the country's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej also smack of desperation, critics say.
Thaksin, a populist who easily won three elections before his ousting in a bloodless military coup in September 2006, remains extremely popular with the rural poor who feel deprived of a 'fair' share of the country's wealth. But Thai politics is punishingly expensive, and especially so for those, like Thaksin, who are forced to rely on unreliable proxy campaigners. Although some key supporters say privately they would like to bide their time until the next election, which could happen next year, Thaksin appears to have a more urgent, and more personal, agenda. And few doubt his ability to cause tremendous nuisance to the Thai establishment in the short term.