BANGKOK, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra faces the toughest challenge of his five-year-old premiership following the surprise resignation of two cabinet ministers and a mass rally in central Bangkok over the weekend in which more than 50,000 demonstrators demanded his resignation.
The rally at Bangkok's Royal Plaza on Saturday and Sunday was the biggest anti-government demonstration since the violent protests that led to the fall of the country's last military regime in May 1992. Chanting "Thaksin get out," the huge crowd cheered as the rally's organizer, media firebrand Sondhi Limthongkul, accused Thaksin of wholesale corruption and nepotism.
Most of the demonstrators wore yellow scarves or headbands inscribed with the slogan "rescue the nation". The color yellow is used to symbolize the monarchy, an institution for which Thaksin and his critics profess unqualified loyalty.
The campaign to oust Thaksin, who was elected by a landslide to a second four-year term last year, has gained momentum following the Jan. 23 sale of the company he founded, Shin Corp, to the investment arm of the Singapore government, for $1.9 billion. The sale, the biggest such corporate take-over in Thai history, triggered outrage because of Thaksin's previous denials that such a deal was in the works, widespread concern about turning over the country's leading mobile phone and communications satellite business to foreign ownership and the fact that Thaksin and his proxies managed to avoid paying any taxes on the deal.
Thaksin has dismissed critics of the deal, saying they were "just jealous of my money." But his insistence that the sale was carried out in accordance with Thai law has failed to halt a slide in his popularity. A poll by the Research Institute of Bangkok University said more that half of Bangkok residents thought the Shin Corp deal was not handled transparently and more than 80 per cent believed it would tarnish Thaksin's image and fuel conflict-of-interest suspicions.
Last Tuesday Thaksin was hit with a broadside from an old ally, former Bangkok governor Chamlong Srimuang, who led the mass protests that toppled General Suchinda Kraprayoon from power in 1992. Chamlong urged Thaksin to donate $666 million of his profit from the Shin Corp sale to the country's poor.
And last Thursday a group of 140 of the country's most prominent academics and political activists issued an open letter calling on Thaksin to resign immediately because "you have lost the legitimacy to govern the country."
The impression of a government under siege was enhanced by the announcement Saturday that Information and Communications Technology Minister Sora-at Klinpratoom had resigned from Thaksin's cabinet. On Friday Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong resigned, bemoaning the lack of "political ethics" in the Thaksin government. Both ministers were members of a powerful faction within Thaksin's ruling Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party.
"We're not buffaloes," shouted Sondhi, Thaksin's loudest critic, at Saturday's mass demonstration. "Mr. Thaksin should know that we are not stupid and we know what he's up to."
"This is an historic day," he told the crowd. "You've come to rescue the nation. This nation does not belong to Shin Corp."
Sondhi is himself a controversial media tycoon who strongly supported Thaksin until, he said, he became disillusioned with the corruption and cronyism that permeates the Thaksin government. Sondhi publishes a Thai-language newspaper and Thai Day, an English-language newspaper insert in the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune.
He says his popular political talk show on television was pulled off the air because of pressure from Thaksin. Since then he has defiantly held his weekly talk show at a Bangkok park, accusing the government of wholesale corruption. He has been particularly scathing in his criticism of alleged dirty deals and kickbacks connected with Bangkok's soon-to-open new international airport.
Sondhi has also accused Thaksin of failing to show the proper respect to King Bhumibol Adulyadej, a charge that Thaksin's supporters have turned around by blaming Sondhi for trying to improperly involve the constitutional monarch in politics.
"I'm 58-years-old and I've never in my life seen so much cheating and corruption in government," Sondhi told his yellow-clad supporters at Saturday's rally. "If Thaksin wasn't so thick-skinned he would have crawled to the palace on his knees and begged to resign."
For his part, Thaksin has dismissed Sondhi as a "bum" and vowed that his increasingly vocal critics will have to wait until "late in their next incarnation" for him to resign. He said he had a duty to stay on to the 19 million Thais who voted for his party in the last election.
But he has been careful to show respect for King Bhumibol, 79, the world's longest-serving monarch who this year is celebrating his 60th year on the throne. "Only the king can ask me to resign," Thaksin said in his weekly radio broadcast to the nation on Saturday. "If his majesty whispers to me, 'Thaksin, you should step down,' I would immediately respect his wishes and quit."
Both Thaksin and Sondhi are well aware that there are precedents for royal intervention. Throughout his long reign, Boston-born King Bhumibol has remained largely aloof from party politics, but his rare interventions have been crucial. In 1973 he ordered the exile of the leaders of a corrupt military dictatorship after mass protests near the site of Saturday's rally. In 1992 he stepped in to end the bloody confrontation between supporters of Chamlong and General Suchinda.
Organizers of Saturday's demonstration said they expect the pressure on Thaksin to resign to build in the weeks to come. "This is the biggest anti-Thaksin rally so far," said Somsri Hananuntsuk, a representative of the Asian Network for Free Elections and a veteran of the 1973 and 1992 protests. "Most of the people are middle class people from Bangkok, but a lot of people have come from upcountry."
"I think this (protest) will continue in many forms," she told United Press International on the sidelines of the weekend demonstration. "More groups will come out and attack the government. But the other side will also organize demonstrations like this. There is a potential for violence."
