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When I spoke to Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, last weekend about the Thaksin assets verdict, he raised some thought-provoking points about why the Supreme Court’s ruling would not usher in a new era of political stability.
The ruling was in fact likely to strengthen claims [...]

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By GREG LOWE
IN BANGKOK
THE Supreme Court’s landmark ruling to seize 46.37 billion baht (S$1.97 billion) in assets belonging to the family of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is unlikely to have a significant impact on the Stock Exchange of Thailand index or investor sentiment in general, analysts say.
Two grenade attacks on Bangkok Bank branches in [...]

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Preventing foreigners from owning land and property in Thailand does many things: it protects powerful Thai landlords and agricultural monopolies, forces overseas investors to consider setting up shop in other regional markets, drives Thai capital from the country and provides a pool of nationalist bile for tub-thumping politicians to draw on and whip up a [...]

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BANGKOK — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent appointment of Thailand’s former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, as an economic adviser was the diplomatic equivalent of precision bombing, whose shockwaves have sent relations between the neighboring Southeast Asian nations into a tailspin.
But as the dust settles, observers say it is unclear who actually benefited from the increased [...]

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Professor Pakdee Pothisiri has his work cut out.
As one of Thailand’s nine anti-corruption commissioners he is in the front line of the battle against graft in the country’s political and public sectors. But he remains upbeat in the face of the Herculean task that lies in front of him and the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC): [...]

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Greg Lowe | 26 Feb 2009
World Politics Review
When Thai security forces recently raided the offices of the Working Group on Justice for Peace (WGJP) in the country’s insurgency-torn south, it may have been business-as-usual for a military with a checkered human rights record. But a report released last week by the International Commission of Jurists [...]

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