Of all policy-based corruption allegations against former prime minister Thaksin, the loan guarantee for the Burmese government to buy satellite service from ShinSat is the most clear-cut.

Here, Thaksin's direction to the Export-Import Bank of Thailand (Exim Bank) to approve the loan can be established. Thaksin made a special trip to Burma to close the deal to directly benefit his company.

Prior to this scheme, he got the Board of Investment to exempt billions of baht in duty payable by ShinSat. What took place is not much different from Thaksin directing Exim Bank to transfer government funds to ShinSat to build up Shin Corp's stock value.

This case is even easier to prosecute than the alleged Ratchada land grab by his wife. If proven in a court of law, this would be a criminal offence and the prosecutor should have obtained an arrest warrant against Thaksin. He will not risk imprisonment by returning to Thailand. He cannot rely on Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and General Sonthi Boonyaratglin because they have thoroughly confused him by multiple, variable statements about his possible return. Thaksin will wait until we elect a new government and determine how to influence the new Cabinet. In civil cases where the government prevails, they can also seek to enforce judgements against him and his bank accounts worldwide. His status will be an exile and a fugitive from justice.

Netirat Intira

BANGKOK

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Charter draft damaged by extension of police power

Last week, the Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) voted, incredibly, for amendments to Article 32(3) of the draft constitution, which will increase the extensive power of the police, by allowing them to search a person without a court warrant. This is a major step backward for democracy! For, by this human-rights-violating action, the majority of the CDA show a lack of understanding of basic freedoms, and more of a tendency towards a police state, such as that run by Thaksin, who verbally praised democracy, while his actions went against civil liberties.

The police claim that obtaining a court warrant before a search is an obstacle in their work. However, under the present law, there are already provisions or exceptions made so that police can have legal power to arrest a suspect who is caught red-handed without the need to get a court warrant beforehand. We have no need to increase police powers by allowing searches without warrants, which will certainly lead to more abuses or misuse of police power. Possible outcomes of this include extortion, the jailing of innocent people by planting drugs on them, for example, and police using it as a tool to harass innocent people on a blacklist, or to set up roadblocks and cause traffic jams. Giving the police the power to conduct searches without a warrant brings to mind life under Nazi Germany or Stalin-like communist regimes, where warrant-less searches and seizures were common daily events.

Fear of terrorism and crime has made us willing to give up our precious liberties in exchange for false security; for we embrace wholeheartedly without a second thought all anti-terrorist laws which claim to provide us more security but actually violate all basic human rights.  Charter writers blindly claim that they voted for the amended article because it increases police efficiency in arresting suspects, particularly terrorist suspects, and thus increases security for the people. It really sounds good until we finally discover that the arrested suspects are often innocent victims being terrorised by the police or the state.

Do we realise that the most frightening form of terrorism is being robbed of our basic human rights, which include the right to have a court warrant behind any search or seizure?  Security without freedom is slavery.  A prized, singing bird in a pretty, golden cage has total security but no freedom.  Is that what we want?

Let us also not forget that an ancient, well-known Thai proverb has wisely taught us this just and fair, legal truth, "Allowing 10 thieves and robbers to escape is better than catching or jailing one innocent person", for that innocent person may be you!

Therefore, for only this reason, I will reject the new draft constitution. I will also tell my friends and relatives not to vote for it.

Chokchuang Chutinaton

BANGKOK

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Last stand taken in public-smoking debate

Re: "The insidious use of personal restrictions", News, June 19.

I don't want to drag this "debate" on any longer, but just for the record, I would like Mr Bill to know that Songdej Praditsmanont's ("Restrictions on what one does at home unlikely", Letters, June 17) words did not fall on deaf ears.

This exchange has been going on for so long that everyone seems to have forgotten where it started. It started by a comment I made in response to a letter on a separate subject concerning one Doctor Prakit Vathesatogkit, of Bangkok's Action on Smoking and Health organisation. I had read an article where the good doctor was calling for a ban on smoking in all bars and all private homes.

It is true that presently no country in the world bans smoking in your home, but it is also true that smoking was banned in at least one park in Bangkok. To the best of my knowledge, that is a precedent, as is California's ban on smoking on beaches. Considering that, and considering that I have seen every single "call" for some sort of action on smoking over the past 20 years eventually become law, I had no reason not to believe that such a law might find its way into the Thai law books.

Call me gun-shy or paranoid, if you will, but I have witnessed things in the last 20 years that I laughed at when I first heard them, only to find that shortly thereafter, they became law. Let's see what happens with this one, but don't be surprised when today what seems ludicrous to consider, gradually becomes acceptable and then, desirable.

I would like to thank Mr Bill and Major Mark A Smith ("Anti-social behaviour starts with those who want to ban it", Letters, June 18) for offering another view of this ongoing saga. Anti-smoking fanatics can be brutal and I was beginning to feel like General Custer at the Little Big Horn River. But then again, like Custer, maybe I should have never gone near the Little Big Horn in the first place.

John Arnone

YASOTHON

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Retirement contributions can take many forms

Re: "Dancing one's way to an early retirement", Letters, June 19.

I must say I very much enjoyed reading the letter from Christy Sweet in Phuket.  She sounds like a free spirit and, judging from her letter, one who would be very good at writing erotica. 

As she says she was a go-go dancer who made enough money to retire early; I was wondering where she had danced, as it might in fact be my money that allowed her to retire early.

Dean Barrett

BANGKOK

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Burma's membership in Asean shames members

Re: "No celebrations in Burma", News, June 19.

You report that there were no celebrations for "Women of Burma Day", Aung San Suu Kyi's 62nd birthday, in Burma yesterday. The winner of the Nobel peace prize was not allowed to leave her "prison" after years without freedom.

The Thai government is looking upon this situation with open eyes without doing anything. They have agreed to include Burma in Asean, which is an insult to the freedom fighters in one of the least democratic countries in the world.

If I were in the Thai government I would be ashamed! When are you and other Asean countries going to admit that you were wrong in accepting such a country into Asean? The military leaders in Burma are laughing at you!

Oddvar Johansen

NORWAY