Thaksin Shinawatra kicked off his campaign

BANGKOK, Aug 7: Embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra kicked off his campaign today for a general election re-run, handing out cows and land deeds in Thailand's poorest region.

The three-day tour of the northeast, which has the most lawmakers in the 500-member lower house of parliament and where Thaksin remains very popular, drew accusations he was using taxpayer money to win re-election.

Opposition parties, whose boycott of an April general election left Thailand without a functioning parliament and a caretaker government unable to make major policy decisions, complained loudly he was breaching election rules.

But Thaksin defended the trip as a routine tour to check progress of government policies from cheap medical treatment to land deed handouts and cattle rentals.

''It is business as usual. You can't tell the country to stop progressing while politicians are fighting,'' Thaksin told reporters at a Bangkok golf course on the eve of his trip.

Arriving in Khon Kaen province, Thaksin visited a state hospital where patients pay a flat fee of 30 baht per visit no matter what the treatment.

He promptly ordered the transfer of a six year old girl suffering from leukaemia to a more advanced hospital in Bangkok and promised staff, who can earn far more in the private sector, greater incentives to stay in the state system.

Thaksin, expected to win the October 15 re-run poll with a reduced majority due to his firm support in the countryside, called the April snap general election, later declared unlawful, in an attempt to defuse street protests against him.

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But it is far from certain whether he will remain prime minister if his Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party wins. He has made no comment on the issue as the party faces charges of election misconduct in April which could see it dissolved by the Constitutional Court in a trial widely expected after the October election.

Thaksin, who won landslide victories in 2001 and 2005, could also be banned from holding office in any party for five years if the party is found guilty, but could remain as a member of parliament.

Analysts said Thaksin needed another landslide win to keep the majority of Thai Rak Thai MPs if it had to be reformed under a new name as some factions might defect to the opposition.

''Thaksin can't afford to have a neck-to-neck race. He needs to win by a big margin,'' said law lecturer Prinya Thaewanarumitkul of Bangkok's Thammasat University.

That is why he is focussing on keeping his support in the countryside, analysts say, handing out land deeds to villagers, pairs of oxen and cows to poor families, and checking on pilot projects to tackle poverty in the northeast.

He launched the trip shortly after the courts moved towards fixing a long-running political crisis by jailing the three sitting election commissioners for four years for mismanaging the April election.

The saga started at the end of last year when a former business associate launched a public campaign accusing Thaksin of corruption, cronyism and abuse of power.

Despite massing more than 100,000 supporters on one occasion outside Government House, the campaign to oust Thaksin looked destined to fail until his family sold off its stake in its telecommunications empire for a tax-free 1.9 billion dollars.

Thaksin called the snap election after Bangkok erupted in anger at the deal.

REUTERS