Thailand to get Thaksin-flavoured cabinet

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 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 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.
Thaksin's brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, was to become one of Samak's six deputy prime ministers and in all probability the conduit through which Thaksin exerts his
influence from exile in London and Hong Kong.
Thaksin opponents are already dubbing it a "puppet cabinet".
"Most cabinet decisions will ...