Hun Sen realises the folly of supporting Thaksin

Hun Sen (R) and Thaksin during the latter's departure from Siem Reap on 14th November 2009.

By Kamol Hengkietisak
Bangkok Post

The Cambodian government announced on Aug 23 that former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had resigned as a personal adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen and as economic adviser to the Cambodian government, citing personal difficulty in fulfilling the roles. This paved the way for Bangkok and Phnom Penh to restore normal diplomatic relations, noted Nongnuch Singhadecha writing for Matichon.

Even though some Thai critics remarked that it was a staged act by Thaksin and Hun Sen and that the Thai government should not put much faith in Hun Sen, Nongnuch believed it was in Cambodia's own interests to dismiss Thaksin as an adviser - otherwise Thailand would not resume normal diplomatic ties.

After Thaksin resigned from his positions, the two countries returned their ambassadors to their posts in Phnom Penh and Bangkok respectively. Diplomatic relations had been downgraded to the charge d'affaires level when Thaksin was appointed adviser in November last year.

Nongnuch speculated that Hun Sen finally realised that supporting Thaksin openly and wholeheartedly was not in the best interests of Cambodia. As time passed, Hun Sen realised that holding "junk stock" like Thaksin and hoping for a quick profit would not materialise and that Thaksin was static on a declining trend and could even plunge to a lower level than his IPO price as there was no positive news to support him. In the parlance of stock speculators, Thaksin stock has no future.

The situation after the red shirt unrest in April-May with the total defeat of the red shirts made it quite clear to Hun Sen that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who Hun Sen used to ridicule as unlikely to last long, could now consolidate his position and that it would be sometime before a new general election is held, and it is not even certain that Puea Thai will take power. The economic news in Thailand is also encouraging in that GDP growth for the first and second quarter was at the forefront in Asia, consolidating the position of Mr Abhisit even further.

Hun Sen's open support of Thaksin was the main obstacle to unifying Asean, which aims to become a common market and attract trade and investment to the region. The Asean market boasts more than 500 million people with Indonesia alone having 240 million. The region is a magnet for overseas investors from the West and Asian economic giants China, Japan and South Korea. Those countries do not want to see Asean countries mired in conflicts just because Hun Sen saw personal ties with Thaksin as more important than the interests of Cambodia and Asean.

Objectively speaking, Hun Sen committed a diplomatic misstep in taking on board a fugitive from justice. It soured relations between Thailand and Cambodia. Whatever angle one looks at it from, there was no need for Hun Sen to officially announce the appointment of Thaksin as his personal adviser and an economic adviser to the Cambodian government. If Hun Sen had been wiser, he would not have put all his bets on Thaksin and announced the enmity against Mr Abhisit. He could have quietly appointed Thaksin on an informal basis to help him and the Cambodian government. With no official announcement, Hun Sen could have avoided souring diplomatic relations with Thailand while hedging his bets if Puea Thai came to power.

On the Puea Thai Party front, Thaksin loyalists argue that he was not dismissed from his advisory position but resigned voluntarily to improve relations between the two neighbours. If that were the case, Nongnuch wondered why Thaksin had not thought about this when he accepted Hun Sen's invitation to become an adviser. If he had not really wanted to sour relations between the two countries, he should not have accepted the position in the first place. The fact he accepted meant he cannot deny that he wanted to show the Abhisit administration and its backers that he was still accepted as a respected international figure by Thailand's neighbour to the point where that country did not care much about good relations with Thailand.

Nongnuch said if Thaksin was really behind the violence aimed at toppling the Abhisit administration, as many believe, he should now know that using force and violence to fight the military establishment is futile, seeing the failure in April last year and April-May this year. Violence will not succeed as it is not the democratic way.

If the red shirts continue to agitate and obstruct ruling politicians who are doing their duty in the countryside, it will give even more legitimacy to Mr Abhisit's claim to continue to rule until his term expires late next year without having to be forced to dissolve the House early for a general election, citing that the situation is still not peaceful and that candidates may not be able to campaign freely throughout the country without facing obstruction.

The resounding defeat of Puea Thai in Bangkok's local elections on Sunday, Aug 29, even though the Democrat Party did not sweep all seats, means that Bangkokians do not think too much of the red shirts torching Bangkok in May.

Puea Thai claimed only 42% of eligible voters bothered to come out to vote and thus this election did not reflect the true feeling of Bangkok voters. Nongnuch begged to differ, arguing that with the two main parties fighting tooth and nail to win over Bangkok voters, it would be unthinkable that the true, die-hard red shirt supporters would sit tight and let the Democrat supporters have their day as the memory of the red shirt defeat in May was still fresh in their minds.