Thaksin to return as Thai political mess churns on

HONG KONG, Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Tuesday he would return to Thailand from exile after the party he backed emerged from weekend elections front runner to form a coalition government.

Thaksin, his party dissolved after a bloodless 2006 coup and he barred from politics for five years for electoral fraud, told a Hong Kong news conference he wanted to clear himself of the corruption charges brought by military-appointed investigators. He declared again he would not re-enter politics when he returned "by April at the latest".

But, in a statement likely to upset his many enemies inside and outside the military, Thaksin said he would be happy to advise the People Power Party his supporters took over after their party was dissolved. "I will not take any political position," he said after the PPP won 232 of the 480 seats in parliament in Sunday's election and started trying to put a coalition government together.

"That's enough. I am quitting politics," he said, but added; "I will give my ideas free of charge" if the PPP asked for them.

Thaksin called for reconciliation in a country the election proved still deeply divided between the urban middle classes whose mass protests preceded the coup and the countryside which swept him to two landslide election victories. "I urge everybody concerned to forget the past and look forward to the bright and prosperous future for Thailand," he said.

However, the precise course Thai politics will take is still far from clear, with most parties saying they are unlikely to reveal their hands until the military appointed Election Commission finalises the results, expected by Jan. 3.

The commission is also investigating scores of allegations of electoral fraud and there are frequently expressed suspicions that there will be military pressure to disqualify PPP winners and whittle down its numbers. "A PPP-led coalition would be a frontal assault on the Establishment, pitting the forces and interests of the majority of the electorate against those of a significant minority that includes Bangkok," political analyst Thitinan Pongsudhirak said.

"Perhaps this is Thailand's inevitable reckoning, a collision course that was bound to arrive on the scene after decades of wilful neglect of the majority by the minority," he wrote in the Bangkok Post newspaper.

Tuesday, Reuters