One issue that has not been discussed enough as the country prepares to set reform goals is the Thaksin government's gross mishandling of the restive Muslim South.

In the context of the deep South, the Thaksin regime has been characterised by ignorance, corruption and abuse of power. Thaksin underestimated the rise of Islamic militancy in the region and unnecessarily tampered with pre-existing security arrangements that had so effectively maintained peace for more than a decade.

His most serious mistake, which that led to an escalation of violence in the region, was the replacement of an administrative body comprising civil administrators and military and police officers with his CEO-style provincial governors, then later by a military-led Southern Border Province Peace-building Command.

Thaksin never bothered to pay attention to the historical background of the region or the way of life and local traditions that existed there for centuries before the formation of the modern Thai nation-state. The emphasis was solely on a narrowly defined Thai nationalism aimed at compelling local citizens, mostly Muslims of Malay descent, to be assimilated into predominantly Buddhist mainstream Thai society.

Thaksin has also been blamed for setting up a virtual police state in the region, creating a reign of fear in which allegations are rife of state-sponsored abductions of local residents who were suspected of being involved in the violence. Many have been "disappeared" over the past two years without a clear explanation from the government, including prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit.

Action and reaction directed at the Thaksin regime resulted in violence that killed more than 1,100 people and injured some 1,700 others between January 2004 and January of this year.

It started out with a raid by Islamic militants/Malay separatists on a military camp in Narathiwat in which four soldiers were killed and more than 300 weapons stolen.

The government's knee-jerk reaction was to deploy thousands of troops to the South and randomly arrest hundreds of people suspected of involvement in the incident. Nearly 200 people died in official custody during two major crackdowns in 2004 - on April 28 and October 25 - which prompted international outrage and harsh criticism from the world's largest Muslim agency, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, as well as neighbouring Malaysia.

With the media and urban middle class focused on the ongoing political deadlock in Bangkok in recent months, the violence in the deep South, including bombings, shootings and acts of sabotage, has continued unabated. The daily incidents are making a mockery of the rule of law and steadily raising the number of casualties. Thousands of families have been affected.

Of course, residents in the deep South are not resigned to their fate, nor are they sitting on their hands waiting for Bangkok to give them badly needed solutions. Local communities and religious leaders together with local intellectuals gathered a few weeks ago to discuss ways to bring "reform" to their region. They are also working closely with the government-sponsored National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to seek ways of ending the violence and sustaining peace in the restive region.

Locals and the NRC, which is chaired by former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, are about to complete a plan aimed at tackling the root cause of violence and problems in the deep South: Thaksin's legacy of corruption and intolerance. Such a reform agenda should form the basis of a solution that can create lasting peace and prosperity, both of which have long been absent in the deep South.