With a tongue-in-cheek tone, Thaksin Shinawatr said today that he should probably thank the military for freezing his assets in Thai banks -- because he could have otherwise made unwise investments in stocks and might have lost all his fortune.
"I don't know whether I should condemn or thank the military junta when they froze my assets in Thailand, otherwise I probably would have invested a lot in the stock exchange and lost it," he said.
Thaksin finally made his long-promoted live televised speech to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong today. The speech was also relayed on to the Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand.
But then, he showed his real intention when he added: "I hope I can get it back too because it's my family's money."
That, it seems, is the more difficult part of his struggle with Thai authorities.
It seems to me that Thaksin was reading from a prepared text when he commented on the financial meltdown in the United States. The phrases and expressions he used didn't seem natural to him. He blamed on "financial wizards" and "slumbering regulators"
But when the question-answer session came, the exchange was mostly about his personal life and not about the world recession.
"I wish to see my country back to normal but if you want to (have) clapping hands, you need both hands, not just one. Both sides need to reach an agreement," he said.
1 comment:
Thaksin I think meant it when he said he should be probably be thanking the coup masters for the freeze on his assets that prevented making any stock market bets that would have certainly incurred huge losses in the current dire global economic/financial crisis.
That begs the question: Does Thaksin have a more than 50:50 chance of recovering any of his frozen assets during his lifetime? Is more time and delay in resolving many of the Thaksin cases working for or against Thaksin's favor?
Personally I believe Thaksin was dumb to dig himself into more deep holes and not fight all the legal cases against him in Thailand. But obviously Thaksin must still be getting and following advice from the stars . . . or his shamen.
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