Ex-PM blames revolution for recent malaise
PUBLISHED: 21 Jan 2025 at 05 :57
Previous top Thaksin Shinawatra has returned fire following Palang Pracharath Party leader Gen Prawit Wongsuwon’s issues of victimisation, saying the devastation in elections can be traced back to the president’s entrance.
” The mess we’re in today begs the question,’ Why stage a coup in the first place? ‘” Thaksin said.
Gen Prawit was a prominent figure in the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration first installed by the coup-maker National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO ) that toppled the Pheu Thai Party-led government in May 2014.
Thaksin said the process of state should have been allowed to run its course instead of being short-circuited by means of a military coup.
He accused the NCPO of writing or rewriting rules to stay him out of politics while consolidating its own power. ” That’s how it is. We have to take it and correct the defects where we can,” Thaksin said.
His quip was prompted by Gen Prawit’s address to the “PPRP: Then and Then” conference on Monday in Prachuap Khiri Khan, during which he said the country has slipped back into its old habits of morally weak politics plagued by infighting for self-interest.
He said the state of politics of today is a far cry from being a people-centric ideal.
He also insisted that the PPRP, once the ruling party under the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration, had always been a target for political attacks.
The PPRP was booted out of the coalition shortly before the Paetongtarn Shinawatra government was formed. The purge marked a low ebb in relations between the PPRP and Pheu Thai.
The PPRP was left beleaguered by a bitter internal rift that saw Capt Thamanat Prompow quit as its secretary-general amid a major dispute with Gen Prawit, the PPRP leader, reportedly over the allocation of cabinet posts.
Capt Thamanat went on to lead a group of PPRP MPs in a party rebellion and formed a faction that was later granted three seats in the Paetongtarn Shinawatra cabinet.
Soon after that, the PPRP was dropped from the coalition line-up altogether.
On Monday, Thaksin maintained Gen Prawit was much less a victim than he was and bemoaned the political persecution he claimed had driven him into self-exile.
Meanwhile, Gen Prawit added the party stands firm in its desire to uphold a modern brand of conservatism, whose ultimate goal is to defend national integrity, the monarchy and religion.
” We will work to make people’s lives better,” he said.
Prawit: ‘ Old bad habits have returned’