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BANGKOK - THAILAND'S new cabinet, packed with supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was due to be sworn in on Wednesday, marking the return of elected government after a 2006 coup.
The line-up was due to receive the blessing of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej around 0930 GMT (5.30pm Singapore time), but domestic media reports suggest there would be no doubt about the identity - and loyalties - of key ministers.
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who admitted before the Dec 23 poll he was a 'proxy' for Thaksin, will double as defence minister - a slap in the face for the generals and indicator of how low their political star has fallen since the coup.
Other important posts would go to top officials of the People Power Party (PPP), the successor to Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, banned after the coup for electoral fraud.
Despite an army-led campaign to discredit Mr Thaksin after the coup, his mainly rural supporters flocked to vote in the December election, pushing the PPP to a clear majority and making it the dominant force in a six-party coalition.
Former Thaksin spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee, a doctor whose family owns a network of weight-loss clinics, was expected to become finance minister and Mr Thaksin's Oxford-educated lawyer, Noppadon Pattama, foreign minister.
Mingkwan Sangsuwan, formerly a senior marketing executive at Toyota's Thai operations, was to take the Commerce Ministry and be in charge of overall economic policy.
Mr Thaksin's brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, was to become one of Mr Samak's six deputy prime ministers and in all probability the conduit through which Mr Thaksin exerts his influence from exile in London and Hong Kong.
Thaksin opponents are already dubbing it a 'puppet cabinet'.
'Most cabinet decisions will be made outside of Government House - both domestically and overseas,' Suriyasai Katasila, who led mass street protests against Thaksin in late 2005 and 2006, told reporters.
His comments raised the prospect of a revival of the protest movement that brought more than 100,000 people to the streets of Bangkok at its height to accuse Mr Thaksin of being corrupt, abusive and disrespectful to the monarchy.
Analysts say the protests and subsequent coup were also the Bangkok-based royalist and military elite reacting to the unprecedented power of Mr Thaksin, an ethnic Chinese provincial billionaire whose popularity was built on lavish rural handouts.
Mr Thaksin has been cleared of any insult to the crown, but is facing one corruption charge relating to his wife's purchase of a prime piece of Bangkok real estate while in office. -- REUTERS
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