By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DE FACTO PHEU THAI BOSS Thaksin Shinawatra has quietly looked to exert his hidden power via the Senate over “independent” agencies ranging from the Election Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission to the Constitutional Court, among others, according to partisan sources.
Thaksin, father of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, has taken steps albeit in hush-hush, discreet fashion, to practically keep those “independent” agencies under control, beginning with the naming of their new commissioners and judges by the 200-strong senators from this year.
At issue which has been still upsetting Thaksin are the slow-going steps taken by the NACC to investigate the six-month-long fake-out allegedly staged by the de facto Pheu Thai boss as a “critically-ill” patient at Police Hospital at the expense of taxpayers’ money and the compromising of legal loopholes by executive officials of the Corrections Department and the hospital.
If finally guilty as charged, the billionaire power player could possibly be returned to prison whilst those relevant officials could possibly be faced with power abuse and misconduct charges and sentenced to jail as well.
In order to keep the “independent” agencies under control, Thaksin would undoubtedly see to it that a majority of the senators most of whom being currently loyal to de facto Bhumjaithai boss Newin Chidchob finally turncoat to practically abide to the de facto Pheu Thai boss’s design and schemes, according to the partisan sources.
Given the likelihood of the Department of Special Investigation resolving to dig into allegations that last year’s senatorial elections were evidently riddled with rigging, bloc-voting shenanigans, thus prompting the agency to find out whether they could lead to money-laundering charges, the de facto Pheu Thai boss’s hidden design to bring a majority of the total 200 senior lawmakers to his side has exponentially gained momentum.
Amongst as many as 138 senators who may be suspected by the DSI to have been more or less involved in the electoral fraud which landed them questionable victories in the unprecedented, complicated elections, no less than 100 would be clandestinely pressed sooner or later to skip over from Newin’s camp to Thaksin’s, the partisan sources said.
“The political future of those senators would be definitely at sake whilst the authorities currently have a few months’ time from now to formally press criminal charges against them on grounds of alleged involvement in electoral rigging and bloc-voting plots orchestrated by elements associated with the Bhumjaithai, albeit in discreet, indirect manner,” one partisan source said.
The DSI, a government agency under command of Justice Minister Thavi Sodsong, has already obtained pieces of purported evidence of the electoral fraud allegedly involving those winning senatorial contestants at district, provincial and national levels, literally including papers of voting scripts which had been found in hotels where they had held informal meetings and been provided accommodation by the politically-associated canvassers.
The planned investigation by the DSI could possibly prompt money-laundering charges not only against the suspected senators but those who may have stood behind the scenes and been connected one way or another with the Bhumjaithai, the second largest coalition partner, which has been occasionally at odds with the Pheu Thai, the core of the current coalition government, the partisan sources said.
Thanaporn Sriyakul, director of the Institute for Political & Policy Analyses, concluded that the de facto Pheu Thai boss would hardly pay attention to sustained efforts on the part of Pheu Thai MPs and others to amend the junta-designed constitution of 2017 but has patiently waited for an opportunity to manipulate a majority of the senators who are constitutionally empowered to name members of those “independent” agencies.
On behalf of the elite-class conservatives, the Bhumjaithai has been sitting pretty with their resolute defence of the current constitution and would not cringe in the possible event of clashing head-on with the Pheu Thai when it comes to the prolonged, unresolved constitution amendment issue, according to the academic.
That the Pheu Thai had been considerably defeated by Newin’s camp in recent elections of heads of provincial administrations, also known as Nayok Or Bor Jor, though the latter had not declared themselves to the public as a campaigning party under whose tickets those provincial contestants may have run would refuel Thaksin’s desire to finally win over the pro-Bhumjaithai Senate.
Prior to his return from self-exile abroad in 2023, Thaksin had reached a “secret deal” with the country’s powers that be who remained more or less influential to Newin’s camp to the extent that the de facto Pheu Thai boss has practically become a free man who had never spent a single day behind bars to otherwise serve a curtailed, one-year sentence in jail under court-convicted, power abuse charges.
He then literally manoeuvred the surprise dumping of the Move Forward, a former post-election ally, and forged the jaw-dropping alignment between the Pheu Thai and the Uncles’ Camps, namely the Palang Pracharath and Ruam Thai Sang Chart, and set up the Pheu Thai-led coalition government together with the allocation of cabinet portfolios among coalition partners.
CAPTION:
Above: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, right, and de facto Bhumjaithai boss Newin Chidchob, left. Photo: Sanook.com,
Front Page: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, right, de facto Bhumjaithai boss Newin Chidchob, centre, and Deputy Prime Minister/Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul,left. Photo: MNG Online
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