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Issues include whether telecoms liberalization measures unfairly benefited the country's main mobile phone service provider, then controlled by Thaksin's family; and whether he unfairly promoted a US$127 million low-interest loan to neighboring Myanmar to benefit a satellite communications company also controlled by his family. Thaksin's critics would see a guilty verdict as the culmination of a process to cleanse Thai politics that began with protests in 2006 calling for his ouster for alleged corruption that segued into a military coup in September that year. They also accuse him of disrespecting the country's constitutional monarch, 82-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej. His supporters would see such a ruling as the latest in a series of injustices that drove a democratically elected leader from office despite two sweeping election victories. They believe he is being persecuted because the traditional urban ruling class felt threatened when he empowered the country's rural majority, which was grateful for Thaksin's innovative social welfare programs.
The passions held by the two sides led to the occupation of the seat of government for several months and the seizure of the capital's two airports for a week by Thaksin's opponents in 2008, and rioting and disruption of a conference of Asian heads of government by his supporters last year. His Red Shirt supporters continue to rally on his behalf and have promised a "million-man" march next month. Thaksin, who fled into exile ahead of a 2008 conviction on a conflict of interest charge, rallies his followers by video and over the Internet. His opponents accuse him of funding the Red Shirt movement to topple the government, and hope that seizing his assets will starve the movement. But at least one analyst says the anti-government movement will not simply fade away, even if Thaksin's cash dries up. "It would not put an end to Thailand's crisis because now Thaksin's supporters, the Red Shirts
-- the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship -- they have evolved into their own force to be reckoned with," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist from Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
[Associated
Press;
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