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Published on April 22, 2008

Achara Deboonme

achara_d@nationgroup.com

The Nation

Civil servants in the city reportedly turned up for work late, because they had queued up to welcome the man who still played an important role in Thailand despite his insistence he had abandoned politics forever.

His pilgrimage to Khon Kaen was part of Thaksin's plan to visit 99 temples around the country in a bid to rid himself of misfortune.

Alas, Thaksin has indeed endured some rough times.

Even though he was elected prime minister by a huge number of votes, he was overthrown and forced to live in exile for a year before returning home recently to face corruption charges.

Even though he is the owner of English football club Manchester City, he is not seen on the sidelines as often as is Chelsea's Roman Abramovich. Due to wrangling over legal cases, he needs court approval to leave the country (which explains why he was not present on Sunday to celebrate Man City's victory over Portsmouth).

His temple tour coincided with astrologers' pessimistic predictions for Thai politics. Although dismissing the probability, current Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has been seen paying respect to the dark god Rahu.

Is all of this bad luck because of the stars?

That's hard to believe. How can stars determine ones' destiny? Can we defy the power of the stars? I guess politicians think they can, just like those laymen who still worship gods for something in return.

Before entrance examinations, parents appear at shrines renowned for making true the wishes of worshippers. But doubt remains: what if all of the parents of the 200,000 students who applied for the exam were to turn up at the shrines? It seems impossible the sacred gods could satisfy them all, given that the number of seats provided by state universities is a whole lot less than 200,000.

Likewise, what if opposition politicians also worshipped Rahu or other gods to bring down the current government? I guess the gods would have to think very hard about whom to award the laurel wreath.

But such divine worship does albeit only psychologically.

That's why Thaksin looked so happy yesterday. But he may have forgotten it was in this very same Khon Kaen temple that he attended a worship ceremony just before the launch of that fateful coup.