Thaksin steals the spotlight. ( from CNN )

Is Thaksin Shinawatra a criminal or a VIP? The question must have vexed the Japanese officials who considered a request by the former Thai prime minister to start a six-day tour of their country this week. Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 military coup, then sentenced in absentia to two years in jail for corruption. Previous attempts by the Dubai-based billionaire to visit Japan and other major nations have been stymied by a hostile Thai government. Stripped of his Thai passport, he travels the world as a citizen of Montenegro.

But Thailand's government has changed — Thaksin's younger sister Yingluck, 44, recently became the nation's first female prime minister — and so has the status of its best-known fugitive. He arrived in Tokyo on Aug. 22 to be greeted by Japan's financial services minister Shozaburo Jimi. "Coming to Japan is my own right," he told reporters. "My sister has nothing to do with it."

Well, maybe not his sister. The opposition Democrat Party alleged that Thaksin got his Japanese visa with the help of another relative, this time a distant one, called Surapong Towichukchaikul. He happens to be Thailand's foreign minister. Surapong denied the allegation, but it left many Thais wondering about their new prime minister's priorities and judgment.
Thailand faces a number of pressing issues, including catastrophic floods and rising costs of living. But the visa scandal suggested Yingluck's first order of business was rehabilitating her controversial brother. A Bangkok Post editorial saw it as evidence of the government's "troubling and divisive favoritism" towards the man whose money and tactics helped elect it.

For Yingluck, an experienced businesswoman but a political novice, Thaksin's timing was awful. He arrived in Japan on the eve of the first parliamentary debate on her government's populist policies. In theory, these include sharply raising the minimum wage, giving tablet computers to primary schoolchildren, and establishing the truth about last year's political violence between pro-Thaksin Red Shirt protesters and the military, which killed at least 90 people.

But as Yingluck plodded through a 44-page policy statement in parliament, Thaksin stole the limelight from Tokyo, by embarking on what resembled a ministerial tour. He spoke favorably of Yingluck's government at a lunch with foreign correspondents, urged Japanese investors to keep faith in Thailand, and prepared to tour areas of Fukushima prefecture devastated by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Thaksin's trip was ill-timed but unsurprising. He has loomed large over Yingluck's short political career, which only began in May after the former telecoms CEO was chosen to lead Pheu Thai ("For Thais"), a party widely assumed to be run and funded by Thaksin. "Yingluck is my clone," he said then. Pheu Thai comfortably won a July general election, thanks to Yingluck's common touch on the campaign trail and the enduring popularity of her brother. Thaksin still commands huge support in Thailand, mainly among the rural poor, who say their lot improved during his five years as prime minister. The urban middle-classes and royalist, military-back elites — the Democrat Party's natural constituency — still despise him for his corruption and authoritarianism.

Bridging this political divide was one of Yingluck's avowed priorities, but the visa scandal threatens to derail reconciliation efforts before they have even begun. "It's damaging for Yingluck," says Paul Chambers, a political scientist at Payap University in Chiang Mai. "Now the opposition can say, 'You're not interested in reconciliation. You're just interested in helping your brother.'"

Yingluck seems aware of the damage. "Voters won't allow me to work for only one person," she has said. Polls certainly back this up. Thaksin should stop meddling avoid politics and let his sister do her job, according to two thirds of 2,193 Thais questioned in a recent survey by Bangkok's Assumption University. Any attempt to pardon or repatriate Thaksin could re-galvanize anti-Thaksin street protesters, who in 2008 occupied the prime minister's office and shut down Bangkok's airports.
It would also antagonize Thailand's powerful military. Its generals have remained silent of late — conspicuously so in the case of Prayuth Chan-ocha, the gaffe-prone army chief. Gen. Prayuth helped topple Thaksin in 2006 and his loathing for Pheu Thai is one of the country's worst-kept secrets. But with October's annual military reshuffle approaching, Prayuth is currently preoccupied with resisting attempts by Yingluck's government to promote pro-Thaksin officers. "Prayuth and others are waiting until the reshuffle is complete," says Chambers of Payap University. "Then I think they'll become much more vocal in their opposition to this government."

Thaksin wasn't the only Shinawatra hogging Yingluck's limelight this week. Two days after he landed in Tokyo, a court in Bangkok acquitted his ex-wife Pojaman in an appeal against her three-year jail sentence for tax evasion. The chances of Thaksin's 2008 conviction being overturned remain remote, as does an imminent Thai homecoming. But years of exile have turned him into a patient strategist. Chambers speculates that Yingluck (or her brother) chose a "colorless bureaucrat" like Surapong as foreign minister so that a globetrotting Thaksin could shine as Thailand's pre-eminent statesman. Problem is, he also threatens to outshine his sister, whose first performance in parliament was tepid and unconvincing.

Pre-eminence abroad could win over enemies at home. "Thaksin wants to prove his innocence to the Thai public by showing that he's accepted by the international community," says Kan Yuenyong, executive director of the Siam Intelligence Unit, a Bangkok think-tank. For now, Thaksin's long exile continues, albeit with VIP status. Expect him to make the most of it.