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Published on August 4, 2007

On the other, human-rights groups are making their concerns heard that a chairman with a human-rights record like that of Thaksin should not have passed the league's "fit and proper" test.

To Man City fans, Frank is no doubt "fit and proper". He wants to invest massively in the club and he has ambition. He has already spent £40 million (Bt2.8 billion) on buying new players - an amount close to that spent by Liverpool FC, a bigger and better ranking club. So why should they care about extrajudicial executions or attacks on media freedom?

I'm no football pundit, but as a football fan myself I understand that when the game is concerned, nothing is more significant to fans than goals, victories and trophies. And if someone comes along intending to take a club to glory, then that person is by all means "fit and proper". According to this logic, Frank is no doubt a "fit and proper" person in the eyes of Man City supporters.

Likewise, when fans evaluate a striker they look at the number of goals he scores rather than his behaviour or family life off the field. You can be a womaniser, a wife beater, or a jerk and fans will forgive you once you bring your team to victory by scoring a winning goal.

Football knows no neutrality and no morality. It is all about taking a side, and when you decide to go for a certain team your vision and judgement are blurred in that team's favour. When your team is awarded a penalty you can't agree more, while a fan of the other side will accuse your striker of diving.

The same rules of logic applicable elsewhere do not apply to football. Remember the great head-butt of Zinedine Zidane before he was red-carded at the last World Cup tournament? Despite his actions, Zizou remains a hero to his fans, and all of his advertising contracts remain intact. French football fans still love him dearly, perhaps even more. They feel gratitude for his having brought the national team into the finals, rather than bitterness at his having cost them the game.

We've heard before that football is a new cult and its fans are blind followers. And if football is really emerging as a cult, its members are also probably speaking a different language too. Football does not speak the language of rights, and it proves the universality of human rights wrong.

When Brad Adams, the director for Human Rights Watch Asia, points out that Thaksin has bought his way into polite society in Britain to cleanse his image and record as a human-rights abuser, many, except Man City football fans, nod their heads.

When Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch shout: "He is a human-rights abuser and he is not 'fit and proper' by any means", football supporters hear: "The charges are invalid because they were brought by a military government. Frank's a twice-elected premier who was brought down by the tanks."

And later on Manchester City fans choose to hear his mission: "The second season we should be aiming for the top six and qualifying for Europe."

So what, a Man City supporter would argue, the bloke just killed a few thousand drug-dealers and they're not even good people.

Football fans don't really care about anything else so long as their teams are winning. Anyone who enables the team to win and advance in the league table is a saint. A saint will remain one so long as he guarantees the club's progress. Nothing can degrade the saint except defeat.

It is easier to understand this when we liken football to recent Thai political history. When Thaksin promised and gave the signs that he would provide economic prosperity, no one chose to look into any corruption allegations. He came to lead the country's administration like a saint who would rescue poor Thais. Even the Constitution Court paved the way for him in the assets-concealment case to take the country forward.

The tricky part was that Thaksin, the first-term prime minister, and Thaksin, the second-term prime minister, were still the same Thaksin. Only when people lost faith in him and started to hear the alternative voices at the time did he gradually fall from grace.

So who are we to judge the English football fans? Our 14 millions voters chose him to run the government (in a country with over 60 million people). Why shouldn't the Manchester City blokes agree with his pouring money into the club and owning it?

Talking about that, I wonder how rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were able to tolerate his long rule over Thailand as premier, but can't afford to see him own a football club now. He won't do any harm regarding human rights in his new capacity. All he can do is fire his manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, or his players, but it is likely that he can't fire a gun.

Let him enjoy his saint status while it lasts.

 Veena Thoopkrajae