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StrontiumDog

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Chief Thaksin Advisor Now Yingluck's Guru

Written by Our Correspondent
Wednesday, 04 July 2012


Rasputin returns

Pansak Vinyaratn returns from the cold

Pansak Vinyaratn, the former chief political adviser to ousted Prime Miister Thaksin Shinawatra, has reappeared in the same role for the Pheu Thai government headed by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck, according to a government spokesman.

Called “Thaksin’s Oracle” in dispatches by US diplomats liberated by the website Wikileaks and “Rasputin” by others, the appointment is even clearer evidence, if any were needed, just how integral to Yingluck’s government Thaksin is and appears to be sign of the reassembling of the Thai Rak Thai government in place prior to the 2006 coup.

It is uncertain what effect Pansak’s appoint might have. In earlier years, he was close to Sondhi Limtongkul, the Thai publishing tycoon who initially supported Thaksin’s government but who broke with te former premier and became the de facto leader of the Yellow Shirts, the People’s Alliance for Democracy. The PAD’s violent tactics ultimately played a major role in bringing down not only Thaksin’s government but two surrogate ones that followed. A onetime newsman, Pansak was the first editor of Asia Times, Sondhi’s abortive regional broadsheet daily, which went broke in the wake of the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis.

Pansak has been given a broad portfolio that includes advice and recommendations to the prime minister regarding policies on the economy, public health, social affairs, culture, environment, foreign affairs, legal reforms for development, and administration of justice affairs, a government spokesman said.

Yingluck rules over an uneasy peace that has prevailed since the bloody events of May 2010, when a deadly crackdown on protesters took the lives of more than 90 people, most of them demonstrators, in the center of Bangkok. While there has been calm, there has been no reconciliation.

The magnitude of Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party victory in 2011 elections has largely kept the Yellow Shirts off the streets. But sporadic attempts to find a way to bring Thaksin back from his self-imposed exile without having to serve time after he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in jail have met with upwellings of outrage. That has caused the plans to be abandoned.

Thaksin has nonetheless continued to push for his return from exile, and there have been widespread rumors that he is in the throes of a deal with top Army officials to be allowed to come back. That deal, sources say, would probably preclude his taking an active public political role. In the Cambodian town of Siem Reap on April 14, he held a mass rally to tell his supporters he would return to Thailand in three or four months, possibly on his birthday, July 26. He has made frequent televised broadcasts to followers in Thailand.

The country’s legislature has been tiptoeing into the controversial issue of changing the constitution foisted onto the country by the military following the coup. That document granted amnesty for all military coup leaders, limited the powers of the Senate and made it illegal to publicly criticize the draft document. Any moves to review the 2997 document have been met with threats of extreme violence.

Pansak was said to be behind a wide range of Thaksin’s innovative ideas including turning Thailand into Southeast Asia’s premier car assembly center, peddling Thai food across the world to reflect the country’s culture to the point where Bangkok is called the “kitchen of the world,” and seeking to make Bangkok into a fashion capital.

A fervent nationalist, he is also thought to have been responsible for the so-called "OTOP” concept, or 'One Tambon, One Product, a nationwide sustainable development initiative launched in 2001 to promote products made by local artisans through indigenous skills and craftsmanship combined with available local natural resources and raw materials.

Pansak’s role, other than as a vehement defender of the fugitive former prime minister, is believed to have been a speechwriter for Thaksin as well, although there were very few news stories even quoting anonymous sources about exactly what role Pansak had. That is no longer the case. He is clearly back. The appointment has been approved by the cabinet and took effect yesterday.

A scrappy, often combative individual, Pansak warred with the Royalist Yellow Shirts, speaking with the US Ambassador to Thailand just days before the September 2006 coup, according to cables liberated from the US State Department by the website Wikileaks, to say that “Efforts to destroy Prime Minister Thaksin represent <snipped>. In a September 5 meeting with the Ambassador, Pansak claimed Thaksin intended to withdraw from politics after the next election, but his opponents would continue to harass him to try to force him out from office in September.

Pansak derided the Army commander’s call for negotiations with militants in southern Thailand and noted the Army was split along political lines. In another meeting just before the coup, he told the ambassador that Thaksin’s enemies — and specifically Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda — hoped for his ouster. Prem and his allies, according to the cables, hoped to get rid not only of Thaksin, but also Thailand’s democratic system, Pansak asserted. <snipped>

(With reporting from Asian Correspondent)

__________________
"Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice."-Simón Bolívar

StrontiumDog

Bangkok Post article from yesterday on this

Pansak now PM's chief policy adviser | Bangkok Post: news

Pansak now PM's chief policy adviser

• Published: 3/07/2012 at 03:50 PM
• Online news: Politics

Pansak Winyarat, a former adviser to ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has been appointed chief policy adviser to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, government deputy spokesman Anussorn Iamsa-ard said on Tuesday.

The appointment was approved by the cabinet and took effect from today.

Mr Anussorn said the PM's chief policy adviser is responsible for giving advice and making recommendations to the prime minister regarding policies on the economy, public health, social affairs, culture, environment, foreign affairs, legal reforms for development, and administration of justice affairs.

LooseBowels

An excellent Politically Savvy addition to the people's Democratically Elected Coalition government.

And more importantly, got the ear of the US ambassador, who now knows in no uncertain terms the existence of the thai axis of evil, and so has a red line to Yingluks confidante, Hilary.

Bring it on Nutjobs

You can't argue with that

BobR

Hitler and the Nazis were a democratically elected government for their first term in 1933, history repeats itself and you can't argue with that.

LooseBowels

^ And got your vote did they

You can't argue with that

Itchy

Good to see the government doing something, if only appointing people on the instructions of the square faced cnut.

After all, they aren't doing a lot else are they?!

Well apart from destroying the Thailand's aggro business with populist policies that are in truth only further enriching those extremely rich and powerful people they, the government, claim are the root of all evil.

Democracy my arse.

LooseBowels

Hey Itchy,

But what are you doing?

What are you doing to ensure democracy continues to flourish

You can't argue with that

Itchy

Expressing my opinions on the failings of this givernment to deliver on its election promisses and discussing the dangers of populerist policies to both the national economy and the democratic process.

While never straying too far from the observation that this government is the puppet of a fugetive from the laws he believes he is not subject to.

Open discussion on matters of politicsl, social and legal importance - a corner stone of democracy and one of the surest means of encouraging and protecting democracy.

That is real democracy, not the democracy of puppet governments, vote buying and rent-a-mob street violence.

BobR

It's an ironic time for Thailand to be incurring some much debt to support handout populist policies, given how well they have worked for Greece and Spain.

Cthulhu

Valid points, but you do know that LB is just a troll-nick of Butterfly, just here to troll threads... Right?

Itchy

I imagine he's married to a bad tempered IPD who cuts off his kooky if he doesn't tow the party line.

Yasojack

have the dems ever, had the largest majority wins in Thai election history and you can't argue with that either.

i forgot the last dem govt got elected how?

hazz

you could have a look at the 1996 election and give your take on that.

But then I'm not sure what this or your post has to do with the appointment of a regent to help and advise yingluck

Yasojack

You mean Chavalit that had a 2 seat majority, over the dems then joined Thaksin in forming TRT?

Which then Thaksin won his election and went about bringing Thailand back from its Knees.

hazz

the dems did come first in the poll, but second in seats in parliament, just wondering what you think they should have done over this failure of the democratic process?

Yasojack

Well considering Leekpai and Barnharn had of raped the country in the last two years as them being PM, would you of wanted to be in Government with the Collapse on the horizon

hazz

hindsight is a wonderful thing.... very few people saw that criss coming either through ignorance or blindsness thats why it practically wiped out a whole generation of rich people in thailand. which makes your question about who would want to be in government at that time a bit of a moot point. I am sure the dems were as keen than as they have ever been to be the government

The one chap did seem to have possess hindsight.... managed to move much of his cash out of thailand just before the thai's triggered the crisis by admitting they lied about their currency reserves and they didn't have any. but it later transpired that someone within the government simply gave him the head's up just in time.... presumably for a consideration.

Yasojack

Maybe the person who you have not named was a clever businessman and had the foresight of what was going to happen, seems this person could be very good Prime minister material.

Was he friends with Soros.?

hazz

I don't believe he was a friend of soros, but he certainly was a very talented businessman cultivating a patronage network that gained him advance warning of the floatation of the bhat; information that no other thai family managed to get.
And as you say a very talented politician in that he managed to butcher more of his population than any other civilian PM, and the majority of military governments and yet managed to maintain his electoral popularity. Something Abisit has notably failed to do.

Still its nice too know that he's appointed a regent to make sure the current thai PM stays on message and gets him home sooner rather than later; so that we can have more of the same

Yasojack

Hmm butchered more than any other PM,with the support of the country and the Privy council and beyond, in which i also supported his offensive, is this the same man who is the most successful PM in Thailand history, and when he left office AB could'nt even Beat old Somchai, and the other communists.

I believe TD should have a tribute post to this person

hazz

So butchering your own people is ok if you have an electoral mandate, and yasojack approves.... lovely.

Yasojack

I can not remember Thaksin pulling the trigger on anyone, it was a war on drugs,the people of Thailand were in total support of him, which i am sure has been discussed before, should his war on dark influences of been carried out i am sure that the public would of also backed him again.

Yes i am in support of any person that wishes to eliminate scum form its country.

hazz

^You really are a rather sad hypercritical bastard aren't you.

Yasojack

Seems when you not have answers you abuse people really sad considering you think your a person of some intelligence

hazz

You criticise people for expressing understanding of why someone would want to chain up their daughter, the barbarity of corporeal punishment in a democratic state, the evil of abasit and his killings, o yes and the appalling treatment of animals. Yet you have no problem with mr T and his killing, actually you think they were a good thing.

what I said about you wasn't abuse, it simply an observation about the kind of person you are, based on your postings.