Acosta was in Bangkok to attend a discussion comparing Filipino dictators and Thaksin, organised by Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Communication Arts yesterday.

The senator said dictators should be put in jail after they were ousted.

Crony capitalism plagued both countries while the rural poor tended to vote for corrupt and exploitative politicians, and the middle classes often ousted them, Acosta said.

He said Thaksin and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo both shared the trait of thinking of themselves as the state.

Both Thailand and the Philippines had been captured by interest groups that rendered them opaque and unaccountable and their societies were dominated by urban-rural, rich-poor and educated-uneducated divides. However, Acosta said the people's power movement in Thailand was still vibrant while in the Philippines those wanting to oust the current president faced a sense of "people's power fatigue" where they saw no better alternative.

Associate Professor Sida Sornsri, Thammasat's expert on the Philippines, said Thaksin was worse that former dictator Ferdinand Marcos although both used constitutional means to gain legitimacy.

Both men engaged in populist policies, she said, adding that the two countries had a patronage culture which fuelled corruption.

Assoc Professor Ubonrat Siriyuwasak, of the Faculty of Communication Arts, said while both Marcos and Thaksin controlled the television, Thaksin's weekly radio and television address was like morphine.

"If we go on this way, the prime minister will become a demigod," she warned.

She said Thailand did not have an opponent on a par with Corazon Aquino, who unseated Marcos in 1986.  Robi Alampay, executive director of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance, said both Thais and Filipinos should realise that their brand of democracy was fragile and fickle.

"Thaksin is taking a page from [former Philippines president] Estrada when he said [the anti-government movement] is not about democracy but about the middle class against the poor," he said, adding that both men had a tendency to manipulate the media and show contempt for journalists.

Pravit Rojanaphruk

The Nation