10 years ago today Thaksin Shinawatra took over City

Our incumbent owners soon forced him out from his honorary position. Cook and Al Mubarak had some choice things to say about the state of City as a business shortly after the Abu Dhabi takeover. See Blue Moon Rising for quotes.

Like most political egos, he wanted to remain in the public eye after his stint as Thai Prime Minister.
 
I have my doubts about the human rights thing....very little evidence for it. It was based on Human Rights Watch report, the main source of which appears to have been Thaksins powerful political opponents: the army, the royal family, and the civil service. It was these people who denied the poor rural population the vote; Thaksin enfranchisement them. This infuriated the old guard, mainly because Thaksin became the first ever Thai PM not only to be elected under a universal franchise, but to be reelected. After his ban, his successor party was again re- elected and, of course, the army stepped in. The rural population no longer have the vote.
One of the charges against Thaksin was that he was behind a "massacre" of drug dealers. No evidence for his responsibility in this has ever been produced. He certainly ran a campaign against drugs, but this mainly took the form of persuading farmers in the "golden triangle" to give up growing poppies and grow coffee and walnuts instead. He subsidised this switch. There certainly was at least one shoot out between the police and drug gangs who were violent to the farmers who switched production, but Thaksin always denied giving orders.

I tend to go along with the foreign editor of The Times at the time (sorry name escapes me) who concluded:
"Thaksin is financially corrupt but on a minor scale by the standards of the region. He is certainly not an abuser of human rights."

My daughter has just returned from three years working in the UAE; she could no longer stand the abuses of migrant asian workers and restrictions on women. She has taken a much worse paid job in Hanoi.(Hmmm).
 
I've just done a 93:20 podcast with Stefan Borson (who I believe is still on here) which should be available tonight.

What was fascinating was that there were still factions on an around the club who felt they'd been stiffed by Wardle & Makin.

Franny Lee still had a 7% shareholding and harboured a grudge against them for forcing him out, David Bernstein wasn't too keen on them and wanted to get back in, Stephen Boler's son Mark had nearly 19% of the shares and possibly wasn't too happy with the way things were being run. Wardle & Makin had 30% and Sky had 10% of the shares.

I was part of a Supporters Trust and we hatched a plan to buy Sky's 10% and together with Franny's 7% plus at least another 5% we knew we could rely on, planned to get Bernstein back on the board and probably one other.

We verbally agreed a deal with Sky the day before the Dec 2006 AGM (about £1.75m for their 10% or about 33p a share) but before we could actually purchase the shares the club announced they were in talks with a potential investor.

I simply don't believe that there was anyone serious but it stopped the Sky deal, which was what the club wanted. Apart from Ranson (who was backed by SISU, the same group that took over Coventry) and an American private equity fund owner called Saul Fox, there really was no serious interest until Thaksin came along in the May.

Had Thaksin not come along when he did then we'd have been able to go through with the Sky deal. Frankly, with so many scores waiting to be settled that would probably have been a disaster so Thaksin did us all a favour.
 
Ric said:
Actually seems like even longer than a decade, given what's happened subsequently. Even by City's standards, that was a bizarre period in our history, starting with the street party (and free Thai food) in town. Obviously we can't (and shouldn't) gloss over the human rights abuses but he played a hugely significant role in the modern era of the club. Would the Abu Dhabi takeover have happened without him?

Still seems a bit surreal that he turned up in the South Stand for the crucial derby in the title winning season of 2011/12.

DEClKn0XUAAEDrF.jpg
Click to expand...

Can't believe Adam Johnson was with him but trying to sneak off to the left................. No wonder the young girl looks a little shocked!!
 
Personally think Thaksin was one of the best thing to happen to this club in the last 30 years without him I shudder to think where we would be.
 
Stopped going to home games after 3 or so games when he starting turning the club into a propaganda machine.
''Happy birthday to the King of Thailand'' on the scoreboard weeks before his birthday (and repeated each game until his birthday) being one such example.
Everyone going crazy over him because he bought everyone free noodles..... (shakes head)
 
its a Barm said:
Personally think Thaksin was one of the best thing to happen to this club in the last 30 years without him I shudder to think where we would be.
Click to expand...
This!!
We had just endured a season with just 10 home goals, people were getting the full discount on S/Ts well past the deadline as the club were struggling to shift tickets, and we were offering kids tickets at crazy rates because the demand was so low.
We were on a one-way path to oblivion and TS helped turn that round. We'd toured the silly and very silly divisions, it was time to move forward as a club. Of course nobody could have dreamt of this outcome, but it may well never have happened if TS hadn't taken over for that one season.
 
Villages in poorer areas ofThailand that had no proper roads, streetlighting, mai s water and work when rice farming had finished benefited from Taksin and his populist policies.
His downfall was dodgy land deals and pissing off the Thai elite (especially the queen) who liked the staus quo.
On thw human rights abuse accusations his fuck up was the zero drugs policy which gave local bent coppers liscense to perform extra-judicial killings at a whim, claiming the victims of being drug dealees/smugglers.

Having lived a time in Thailand when he was PM his arrival at city I found funny and happy about, and cannot critisize the man.
Unfortunately with his assets frozen he spunked money he didn't have while here and if not for the sale to ADUG probably would have left us knackered.

All in all I think it's another part of our history that I look back fondly on.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I've just done a 93:20 podcast with Stefan Borson (who I believe is still on here) which should be available tonight.

What was fascinating was that there were still factions on an around the club who felt they'd been stiffed by Wardle & Makin.

Franny Lee still had a 7% shareholding and harboured a grudge against them for forcing him out, David Bernstein wasn't too keen on them and wanted to get back in, Stephen Boler's son Mark had nearly 19% of the shares and possibly wasn't too happy with the way things were being run. Wardle & Makin had 30% and Sky had 10% of the shares.

I was part of a Supporters Trust and we hatched a plan to buy Sky's 10% and together with Franny's 7% plus at least another 5% we knew we could rely on, planned to get Bernstein back on the board and probably one other.

We verbally agreed a deal with Sky the day before the Dec 2006 AGM (about £1.75m for their 10% or about 33p a share) but before we could actually purchase the shares the club announced they were in talks with a potential investor.

I simply don't believe that there was anyone serious but it stopped the Sky deal, which was what the club wanted. Apart from Ranson (who was backed by SISU, the same group that took over Coventry) and an American private equity fund owner called Saul Fox, there really was no serious interest until Thaksin came along in the May.

Had Thaksin not come along when he did then we'd have been able to go through with the Sky deal. Frankly, with so many scores waiting to be settled that would probably have been a disaster so Thaksin did us all a favour.
Click to expand...
Any chance of a link for us technically challenged, thanks in advance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.