When Thaksin Shinawatra alleged recently that his political opponents and critics had resorted to "mob rule" in trying to oust him, Bangkok Senator Kaewsan Atibhodi shot back with a couple of hard-hitting analogies that may have unnerved the embattled caretaker premier.

"I think what has happened is more like a mastermind hijacker taking control of an airliner. When the passengers cry foul and loudly disapprove, this guy announces that everyone on board should behave and should not resort to mob rule. It'd be better for them to sit down and fasten their seatbelts, because this is a critical situation and the journey will be quite rough," says Kaewsan, an outspoken and non-partisan member of the current Senate, whose term expires next month.

"Another analogy is that someone takes a woman by force and then proudly declares that he is her husband. This analogy is in my latest book, 'Stop the Thaksin Regime', which essentially criticises Thaksinomics and other key policies of the regime. It's based on minute observation and studies by myself dating back to the 1990s."

Police last week stopped a truck carrying more than 15,000 copies of "Stop the Thaksin Regime" that were to be distributed to anti-Thaksin protesters at Government House and seized them for examination. However, most of these copies were later released after law-enforcement officials failed to file any charge against the author.

Kaewsan, who graduated with law degrees from Thammasat University and the University of Wisconsin in the late 1970s, was a law lecturer at Thammasat for more than two decades before winning a Senate seat for Bangkok about six years ago with more than 70,000 votes.

As a non-partisan senator, he has consistently charged Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai Party of parliamentary abuse.

"The checks and balances in Parliament did not work at all because the Thai Rak Thai abused its power via all the parliamentary committees," he says. "For Thaksin, democracy is only the means, so Parliament is meaningless. That's why the premier likes to have a big central-government budget with little or no details to be checked by Parliament or why the Lottery Bureau [after the legalisation of once underground lotteries] has been able to have multibillion-baht revenues at its own disposal without any parliamentary scrutiny.

"The mass media too have failed to make enough investigative reports to dig up dirt. Even the Federation of Thai Industries and Board of Trade have been heavily influenced by the government and its allies, so they're afraid of

taking a controversial position," Kaewsan says.

In his book the senator also accuses the Thaksin government of mismanaging the Thai economy, especially in pushing for the signing of free-trade agreements (FTAs) with several countries. "For instance, the FTA with China has put many Thai growers of garlic and other vegetables out of business due to the dumping of cheaper Chinese imports. Ballpoint-pen and electrical-transformer makers here are in bad shape as cheaper Chinese imports have flooded the domestic market. A ballpoint-pen factory recently laid off 700 workers as a result of the FTA signed with China.

"I'm not entirely against capitalism or the market economy or globalisation, but as a democratic country we have the right to choose the right timing and opportunities to avoid or minimise damage to our domestic industries and society.

The country shouldn't be run like a private business enterprise, because the objectives of a business are much narrower and quite different from those of a national economy," he

says.

After completing his senatorial term next month, Kaewsan says, he is looking forward to setting up a law firm that specialises in assisting complaints to the Administrative Court, which has jurisdiction over disputes between citizens and the government.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com