Thai red shirts celebrate freedom of 111 banned politicians

BANGKOK, June 3 (TNA) - Supporters of the red shirted ‘United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship’ recently met to celebrate the political freedom of 111 former executives of the disbanded Thai Rak Thai Party. Speaking to the crowd at the Thunder Dome building in Muang Thong Thani, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in his 15-minute ‘phone-in,’ that he would return to Thailand, though he did not specify when. Among other things, Mr Thaksin reasserted legitimate claims to his 46-billion-baht sum of money, which was seized from him after the military coup in September 2006. In 2007, the Constitution Court dissolved the Thai Rak Thai Party and barred 111 of its executives from politics for five years on charges of election fraud in 2006. The court also ruled that Mr Thaksin had improperly earned the 46-billion-baht fund through his abuse of power under his premiership. He had left Thailand in 2008 just before the Supreme Court sentenced him to a two-year prison term for conflict of interest involving his ex-wife’s purchase of a state-owned land plot in Bangkok. (TNA)