| Sondhi delivers petition to the King |
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| By ThaiDay |
5 February 2006 13:30 |
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The massive protest against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra reached a climax tonight when protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul delivered a petition to His Majesty the King through an aide of Privy Council President Gen Prem Tinsulanonda shortly after 9:30pm.
Sondhi marched to Gen Prems Si Sao Theves residence a short distance from the Royal Plaza where he had earlier addressed a huge crowd estimated at more than 100,000 people. Despite his urging the protestors to stay put at the plaza, several thousand protestors followed him on the 30-minute march to Gen Prems residence.
The Privy Council president and elder statesman was not at home at the time but was away in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The petition to His Majesty the King, however, was submitted to Gen Prems close aide, Vice Admiral Pajul Traprateep.
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After delivering the petition, Sondhi and his supporters marched back to the Royal Plaza where he had promised the protestors that he would continue throughout the night to expose Thaksin and his governments wrongdoings.
A candlelight ceremony will be held at midnight to honor His Majesty.
Some of the protestors are expected to spend the night at the protest site and together offer alms to monks tomorrow morning.
The five pertinent points in the petition submitted by Sondhi are as follows:
1. In addition to monopolizing power in the House, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has manipulated the Senate and the institutions established under the Constitution. At the same time, he has coerced and controlled the media in an attempt to deny citizens their right to be informed.
2. The prime minister has defrauded the public and taken advantage of his power to manipulate public policy, misappropriating public funds for the benefit of himself and his cronies.
3. The prime minister has sold off national resources and properties, including his own business venture, which grew through the exploitation of national resources, to a foreign country, taking advantage of legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes on the transaction.
4. The prime minister has created a religious and moral crisis in which the fundamental values of the nation have been destroyed and replaced by an ethic of consumerism in total disregard to the principles of a sufficiency economy advocated by His Majesty the King. He has also caused dissent among the Buddhist laity and clergy concerning the status of the Supreme Patriarch and instituted populist policies in an attempt to gain votes by distributing funds under various guises, further fueling excessive consumerism.
5. The prime ministers lack of knowledge and understanding of the crisis in the three southernmost provinces has led to the resumption of the most serious crisis of the sovereignty and integrity of the nation. The continually wrong assessments of the situation resulting from this lack of knowledge and understanding have led the prime ministers reliance on civil servants with their own hidden agendas at the local level and his complicity in the elimination of innocent Thai Muslims like Somchai Neelapaichit.
The petition concludes that based on the above, Thaksin Shinawatra has lost all legitimacy to perform his duties as prime minister. This legitimacy has two components. The first is the legitimacy that comes from the power bestowed by the people through the democratic process. The second, which is more essential, is the legitimacy that comes from the exercise of executive power for the benefit of the nation and the people.
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