Bangkok, February 12:

Thailand’s new elected government plans a big spending boost targeting the rural poor while launching an ambitious building spree to upgrade the kingdom’s infrastructure, officials said today.

A draft policy outline, which PM Samak Sundaravej plans to present to parliament yesterday, calls for reviving many programmes that were gutted by the military after the 2006 coup against Thaksin Shinawatra.

“The overall picture of the government’s policy platform is the extension of the pre-coup government’s programmes. Some policies will be kept unchanged, while some will be improved to make them more complete,” said Jakrapob Penkair, the minister attached to the premier’s office. A draft of the policy statement obtained by AFP called for reviving many of Thaksin’s most popular policies, without estimating how much the programmes would cost.

Samak’s government plans to continue Thaksin’s crackdown on illicit drugs, which sparked condemnation from human rights groups when it was first launched in 2003, when 2,000 people are believed to have died.

Meanwhile, another report said Thailand is considering granting partial autonomy to its Muslim-majority provinces, which for the past four years have seen a bloody Islamic insurgency, the new interior minister said today. While conceding that some degree of self-rule in the south “is a possibility,” Interior Minister Chalerm Yoobambrung said independence for the region was out of the question.