Ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra will not dare return from exile because he could be assassinated by his opponents, the general who removed him in a bloodless coup last year said on Wednesday.
Army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin said remarks by Thaksin's lawyer suggesting the former telecommunications tycoon would return to fight graft charges were just a tactic to boost a street campaign against the post-coup, interim government.
"The majority of people still oppose him so if he came back now, in the middle of the crisis, it would put his life in danger," Sonthi told a Bangkok radio station. "It would be very dangerous for him."
Although heartened by the government's announcement on Tuesday that Thaksin was free to return, some of his supporters cautioned that it could be a trap to lure him back to Thailand in order to eliminate him. One speaker at a pro-Thaksin rally outside Bangkok's glittering Grand Palace even alluded to Philippine opposition leader Ninoy Aquino, shot dead at Manila airport in 1983 on returning from exile.
In Bangkok's feverish political atmosphere, anything is starting to look possible. The stock market closed down 2.3 percent at a two-week low amid a slew of rumours, including the army launching another coup against itself or imposing a curfew to prevent a long-running pro-Thaksin demonstration in the capital getting out of hand.
"There were rumours all around the market, from a possible second coup to an announcement of martial law," Tisco Securities analyst Viwat Techapoonpol said. "Foreign investors were selling due to concerns about the use of martial law."
Assurances from the Council for National Security (CNS), as the coup leaders call themselves, that they were not about to move against the pro-Thaksin demonstration of only a few hundred people failed to calm investors and bolster the index.
"The rally is not escalating to violence yet," CNS spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd told Reuters. "Bangkok is not under martial law so we cannot impose curfews."
The political temperature has risen sharply since Monday, when an Asset Examination Committee appointed after the coup ordered domestic banks to freeze $1.5 billion of assets held in 21 domestic accounts by Thaksin and his wife.
Lawyer Noppadon Pattama said Thaksin, who was in New York at the time of the September 19 coup and now lives in London, might return sooner than originally planned to try to clear his name and get his money back.
Changing a long-held stance that Thaksin should not return until after elections slated for December, interim Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said he was free to come back whenever he wished. Surayud also gave a personal guarantee of his safety.
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