Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij has denied being a sympathiser of the military coup in 2006 in his latest Facebook message.
Korn's write-up on March 3 stirred controversy when he questioned whether the Bt76-billion assets-seizure case would have come this far were we to go through a normal democratic process without a military intervention.
Korn suggested that Thai democracy might not be mature enough to let the assets-seizure case go through the normal process.
Personally, Korn said, if he had been a judge, he would have voted to confiscate all of Thaksin's Bt76-billion, instead of just Bt46 billion.
However, he said the Supreme Court's decision was fair enough.
But the opposition or political enemies of the government have interpreted Korn's message as his endorsement of a military coup. For, without the coup, the Assets Examination Committee would not have been set up, setting in motion the chain of events leading to the Supreme Court verdict.
Yesterday, Korn defended himself in Facebook, saying he had not expected his message to get this much attention, create misunderstanding and also distortion.
"Please go back and read what I have written. There is not a single part of my writing that indicates that I supported the coup," he said.
He said he recalled that on the night of the coup, he listened to the news with sadness. His wife also told him that "They staged a coup because you could not bring the dishonest to justice."
Then as an opposition MP, Korn had been most active in pursuing the assets-concealment case against Thaksin. He also dug out information of what went wrong with the Shin Corp deal, particularly the tax-evasion issue, besides uncovering shady deals involving Ample Rich and Win Mark, the offshore companies owned by Thaksin Shinawatra.
Korn said that after the conversation with his wife, he pondered about the whole scenario - his failure to spur the Revenue Department, the Anti-Money Laundering Office and the Securities and Exchange Commission to follow up on the abnormal Shin Corp transactions.
"I tried to hold myself accountable for what had happened and promised that I would not let the coup happen again…
"I would like to add that the best immunity against the coup is a strong foundation of the rule of law or a society that holds the law as sacred. This is in line with what Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Sunday that if the society does not uphold the law, there would not be any end [to the conflict]," Korn wrote.
