Thailand’s combative prime minister has lashed out at a famous fortune teller for predicting his new government’s downfall in another military coup, local press reported yesterday.
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej used his Sunday TV show to criticize Varin Buaviratlert, whose clients are rumored to include ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s wife, and the man who overthrew Thaksin, former army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin.
Varin last week predicted that the coalition government led by Samak would collapse in the coming months, resulting in political chaos and possible bloodshed, the English-language Bangkok Post and Nation newspapers reported.
He also predicted Thailand’s new army chief General Anupong Paojinda would be the next prime minister, the papers said.
“This fortune teller has no shame about making a wrong prediction and I wonder what he is doing to the country by invoking my name and that of the army chief to insinuate another coup,” the Nation quoted Samak as saying.
Close friends and aides of the elusive Varin, however, claim that the soothsayer never said there would be a coup, but simply questioned the longevity of Samak’s government, the Bangkok Post and Nation said.
Thailand has seen 18 coup attempts since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, with the last putsch in September 2006 ousting Thaksin from power and sending him into exile in England. He returned to Thailand in February.
Elections in December returned Thaksin’s allies in the People Power Party to government, led by gruff right-winger Samak.
Samak said last month that he had been warned of a fresh coup plot against his government, but refused to say who was scheming against him.
Meanwhile, three bombs planted by suspected separatists knocked out the power in parts of Thailand’s insurgency-hit south yesterday, police said, while a teenager was killed in a separate incident.
Two bombs blew up next to electricity pylons in Narathiwat Province yesterday morning, local police said, while a third exploded in the afternoon.
The blasts knocked out about 20 percent of Chao Ai Rong town’s electricity supply, police said. No one was injured in the attacks.
Early on Sunday in the same town, a 15-year-old Muslim boy who worked as a waiter in a karaoke bar was shot dead as he drove his motorbike home from work.
Police said the teenager was a government informant.
More than 3,000 people have been killed since the latest unrest broke out in the Muslim-majority Thai south in January 2004.
The region was an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension.
Separatist rebels frequently stage attacks on targets associated with the Thai state, such as schools, army posts, train lines and power supplies.
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