Though there is no doubt that the Thai elite have fought tooth and nail against the emergence of the populist Thaksin, who poses such a threat to the established ways of doing political business in Thailand, being someone beyond the control of the military or the monarchy with such powerful mass appeal, there is also plenty of evidence that the controversial leader himself has used extraordinary measures to further his party's and business interests.

Thaksin hails from a well-known family in northern Thailand, an area that resents the overwhelming influence of Bangkok on national life but which also has a rich flow of drugs-derived cash coursing through its veins. He started out as a policeman but was soon trying to make his way as a businessman. He started many businesses that failed and at one point was reportedly $1m in debt. Somehow he managed to use police influence to get the first cell phone concession in Thailand, forming a partnership with an American company that had the technology. After the concern was up and running the association with the US firm was abandoned.

His critics are suspicious of the way he managed to amass so much money and allege drugs connections. If that were the case he would not be the first Thai leader to benefit in this way.

He was equally 'lucky' in establishing a monopoly in Thai satellite communications, benefiting from billions of dollars that the four 'birds' generated. Even though the satellite business was not under the control of the Thai government, he then, controversially, sold it into the hands of a foreign government — Thamasek, the investment arm of the Singapore government — and omitted to pay any tax on the $2 billion or so of profit. Thaksin entered politics in 1994 and founded the populist Thai Rak Thai (Thai love Thai) party four years later.

It is a measure of his appeal and his financial muscle that he was able to win the 2001 elections with a landslide victory, becoming his country's prime minister. He gets credit for establishing the country's first universal healthcare programme and reducing poverty by half in four years.

What was less noted outside the country was his successful but brutal suppression of the drugs trade. This involved the wholesale elimination of about 2,500 people over a three-month period, a process which many critics believe also encompassed his competitors in the trade in the north-east and those senior figures in the police force who chose not to align themselves with him.

This was a clear marker of Thaksin's disregard for human life — which he had also demonstrated in bloody operations against the Muslims in the south at the hands of a general who was a relative — that was to emerge again later during the Red Shirt protests.

The head of steam against Thaksin for his corruption, muzzling of the press and lèse majesté built up to such a degree that a military junta, later styled the Council for National Security, overthrew him while he was abroad in 2006. The Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party was dissolved and he and the party executives were banned from politics for five years while the assets of himself and his family in Thailand were frozen. The then owner of Manchester City Football Club applied for political asylum in Britain but it was refused.

The initial ban on the TRT was issued with some dispatch but the Electoral Commission took some time before banning Thaksin's party a second time — little wonder after death threats against the judges and hand grenade explosions outside their houses. The death threats came with the warning that they could be carried out at any time in the future, no idle threat when Thaksin's record of eliminating opponents is taken into account. The death threats came after one million baht ($30,000) bribes proffered to the judges failed to prevent the banning of the party the first time around.

The fact that Thaksin is not discouraged from continuing to compete for the attention of the Thai people should perhaps surprise no-one, but his high-handed methods and the misery they have wrought seem to have taught him nothing.

Thaksin's direct input into the sustenance of the recent street protests went beyond the funding of the operation and the instigation of insurrection over the large screens erected at intervals — itself a treasonous activity — to include direct interference in the negotiation process.

Before the rogue Thai general Seh Daeng (Commander Red) Khattiya Sawasdipol was shot, he fomented further resistance by the mob by announcing that Thaksin was against further negotiation at a time when a compromise might have been reached and that the former prime minister rejected the so-called 'road map' to peace. It is not beyond doubt that Seh Daeng might have taken it upon himself to make this announcement without the authorisation of his leader but that seems unlikely, given Thaksin's single-minded focus on his own interests. Certainly in his video-link addresses, the exiled former prime minister incited violence and said that he would return to restore order. The Abhisit government does not seem to have taken these broadcasts seriously though it had every reason to because of Thaksin's record.

The scale of the damage which subsequently became apparent suggests that the protests were planned and funded in advance. The second largest shopping centre in Asia, of more than five million square feet, was burned to the ground. Some twenty other buildings were set on fire, including the stock exchange, while other government buildings were also torched in other cities, including the governor's compound in Chiang Mai in the north-north-east, Thaksin's native region.

Thaksin demonstrated through his support of the insurrection that he does not have the interests of the country as a whole at heart. At any point he could have called off his henchmen before there had been serious loss of life, property and damage to the country's faltering tourist industry. He chose not to, even getting his supporters to invoke an intervention by the United Nations as though he were the injured party and his own people were incapable of running their own country.

The riots have left Thailand with a severely compromised future as a stable state and done incalculable damage to its all-important tourist image.

Prime Minister Abhisit is in an unenviable position. If he doesn't call elections, then he will appear to be afraid to tackle what is undoubtedly for many people a real set of concerns among the disadvantaged, especially in the north. But if he does call them, as he promised to do at one point during the protests, he can be certain that his adversary will do everything in his considerable power to subvert the results.

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