JAIL TIME?
But political analysts say it is unlikely the couple would end up in jail as witnesses from state agencies and bidders who dropped out would be reluctant to testify against them with the PPP-led coalition in power.
"There will be a wholesale effort to wipe the target clean, to allow Thaksin and Potjaman to get off," said Chulalongkorn University political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak.
"If the trial had started last year, there might have been people willing to testify against them, but in the next three months, I doubt it," he said.
After his ouster in a bloodless 2006 coup, Thaksin was accused by military-appointed graftbusters of presiding over rampant corruption during his five years in power, but he and his family have faced few formal charges.
Analysts say Thaksin, who has kept pushing back his return date from exile in London and Hong Kong, has been trying to forge secret deals with the military and the royalist establishment through Potjaman to clear the way for his return.
Thai newspapers are rife with speculation about whether Potjaman has already met some top military brass and chief royal adviser Prem Tinsulanonda, accused by Thaksin supporters of being the mastermind of the 2006 coup.
Analysts saw the election results as a vote against the coup and criticism of the military is becoming ever more trenchant.
The coup leaders failed to eradicate Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party despite its court-ordered dissolution for electoral fraud and the banning of Thaksin and 110 senior party members from politics for five years.
Thai Rak Thai members simply took over the almost defunct PPP, which is expected to take office next month at the head of a coalition government and occupy the most powerful ministries.
