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| Southeast Asia |
| Bangkok sceptical about alleged assassination plot |
| 2006-08-29 |
| Only one in five people in greater Bangkok are convinced an alleged attempt to blow up Prime Minister Thaksin Shinwatra was real, an independent poll showed on Monday. The Bangkok University poll of 1,174 people in the Thai capital and its suburbs over the weekend showed 49.8 percent of respondents were not convinced there was a real attempt to assassinate Thaksin with a sophisticated car bomb last week. Only 20.5 percent believed the plot. The rest did not know what to believe about an alleged conspiracy uncovered on the official opening day of a campaign for an Oct. 15 general election re-run of an inconclusive April poll Thaksin called to counter a street campaign against him. Of the sceptics in greater Bangkok, the region at the centre of the campaign, 60.6 percent believed the government had cooked up the alleged assassination attempt, the poll showed. Newspapers, many of which openly dislike Thaksin, have given plenty of reasons for doubts about a purported plot in which a lone army lieutenant has been arrested and charged, so far, only with illegal possession of explosives. On Monday, they carried prominent reports of opposition calls on Thaksin to name four army officers he says were behind the plot but so far unidentified and apparently still free. |
| Posted by:Fred |