Speaking at a press conference, Chamlong, president of the Kongthap Dharma Foundation, said he had two reasons for calling Thaksin to resign.

First, he saw that Thaksin had abused power to amend the foreign ownership laws to increase percentage of foreign ownership in telecom firms from 25 to 49 per cent just to permit the sale of Shin Corp to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

Chamlong said the sale of Shin Corp had prompted students and lecturers of universities from across the country to have a unison voice calling Thaksin to resign for losing legitimacy.

In the second reason, Chamlong said the Thaksin government had used state television to attack Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda, who is well loved and respected by the armed forces and general members of the public.

Chamlong said since he had invited Thaksin into politics and since he used to work for Prem, when the privy council president was prime minister, he needed to call on Thaksin to resign.

He said his Dharam force would definitely join the February 26 rally against Thaksin and he was confident that this time Thaksin would step down.

He said he had learnt a lot of inside information, which he could not tell, and he believe that the February 26 rally would lead to a political change.

“When over a hundred of thousands of people come out to demonstrate, the prime minister will definitely resign,” Chamlong said.

When Chamlong headed the Palang Dharma, he made Thaksin a Cabinet member. Thaksin later became a Palang Dharma MP and took over the party but later jettisoned it to form his Thai Rak Thai Party.

Chamlong’s “Dharma Army” members are known to be dozens of thousands of members of the Santi Asoke Buddhist sect.