Thaksin: The Man Who Refuses to Go Quietly

Thaksin Shinawatra is the man who refuses to go quietly.

A coup d'etat in September 2006 removed him from power but left his popularity, at least in large swathes of the countryside, largely undented.

By 2007 Thaksin's banned Thai Rak Thai party had mutated into the People's Power Party (PPP) which won elections trumpeted as Thailand's return to democracy. Despite being banned from politics, Thaksin was understood to be the dominant force behind the PPP and was widely perceived to be ruling the country by proxy when the party's nominal leader, Samak Sundaravej, became Prime Minister.

His opponents then turned to the courts. Widely publicised corruption trials resulted in jail sentences for Thakasin and his wife, Khunying Pojamarn. To escape the ignominy of a prison cell Thaksin and his family fled to London.

A coup, conviction and exile should have been enough to marginalise Thaksin for good. Yet he still refuses to yield, retaining unprecedented levels of popularity and casting a shadow over the entire political landscape.

How is it, then, that this former policeman-turned-tycoon-turned-politician managed to achieve such notoriety and influence? To become the man who will perhaps one day be credited with (or blamed for) re-shaping Thai politics and upending the nation's social equilibrium.

A glance back in time reveals that Thaksin's political star was not always so bright.

In 1996 as a Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Banharn Silpa Archa, he famously, and foolishly, promised to solve Bangkok's notorious traffic problems in six months.

His initial involvement with the Palang Dharma Party (PDP) at this time, into which he was inducted by Chamlong Srimuang (now one of the leaders of the PAD and a sworn enemy), also ended in failure and the dissolution of the PDP.

Just three years later, however, Thaksin had miraculously reinvented himself and was already being cast in the role of the nation's saviour in waiting.

Marking his return to the political limelight in July 1998, beaming proudly before a battery of jostling photographers, Thaksin inaugurated the Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thais) party, the political vehicle he rode to a landslide victory in January 2001.



He did so in the shadow of an unprecedented economic slump. A year earlier, in July 1997, Thailand's central bank had devalued the Thai baht sparking a crisis that snowballed into an Asia-wide economic crash that temporarily de-clawed the region's so-called 'tigers'.

In the aftermath of the crash, which marked the end of a decade of double digit growth, Thaksin rose like a phoenix from the ashes. His telecom business AIS (Advanced Info Services), which had boomed on the back of government concessions and an insatiable local appetite for mobile phones, emerged largely unscathed.

With his fortune still in tact and his reputation burnished, it was not hard for Thaksin to garner, and where necessary purchase, the backing he needed to give new momentum to his political ambitions.

Meanwhile Thailand found itself in a rare period of reflection and self-analysis.

After a decade of breakneck economic growth in the 1990s, the pace of life had visibly slowed. New emphasis was given to self-sufficiency, to Buddhist moderation and to improving the quality of Thailand's democracy.

In September of 1997, after intensive public consultation and a hotly contested referendum (pitting traditional conservatives against reformers), a new constitution was promulgated. It promised improved checks and balances to counter the corruption which had become synonymous with Thai politics. The new constitution stipulated that the Prime Minister must be an elected MP and replaced an appointed senate with elected representatives.

The 1997 constitution was just one symptom of the change which had taken place in Thailand's political culture.

Reflecting society's growing obsession with wealth and materialism, the nation's political icons were now no longer drawn solely from the traditional military and bureaucratic elites.

Thailand's new heroes were the businessmen and women (mostly sino-thai) who had amassed huge and ostentatious wealth during the boom years. In the eyes of many Thais these business 'heroes' had helped Thailand become 'charoen' or modern. Compared with the glitter of businessmen like Thaksin, the traditional military and bureaucratic elite, once proud defenders of the nation against communism, appeared increasingly dull and out of touch.

In this political and economic context, Thaksin naturally embodied the material aspirations of millions of Thais. The implicit message was that he would work the same magic which had proved so succesful in business in the world of politics.

Thaksin's brilliance, if it can be called as much, was his ability to spot a gap in the political market and capitalise on the opportunity he saw. He understood, perhaps more clearly than any other politician, that the Thai public was hungry for a new kind of politics.

Thaksin used his marketing savvy to promote his Thai Rak Thai party under the slogan of 'Kit Mai Tham Mai' (new thinking, new ways of doing things'); a slogan which bears an uncanny resemblance to the 'karn muang mai' (New Politics) chant of his opponents in the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

The combination of modern communications and marketing techniques took Thaksin's policy platform further and deeper into the hearts and minds of the electorate than any politician before him. His message, dripping with nationalism and populism, appealed both to the urban middle class and, most importantly, to voters in rural areas, particularly in the North and Northeast of the country.

Though he has been accused of merely amplifying money politics and buying his way into power, the resilience of Thaksin's popularity is evidence that he has gone further than his predecessors in appealing directly to the aspirations of the electorate.

His political campaign and later his government went beyond the usual charade of empty promises by proposing a detailed platform of significant change; including easy credit for debt laden farmers, cheap healthcare, bureaucratic reform and CEO-style governance.

As a leader Thaksin disappointed, demonstrating ultimately that beneath the veneer of slick marketing he was, in fact, little different from the corrupt politicians he had replaced.
Indeed, the scale of his wealth and the power he wielded in office as a result enabled Thaksin to scale new heights of corruption and nepotism.

When this reality became evident, primarily as a result of his evasion of taxes on the sale of AIS to Singapore's Temasek group, his support among the middle class collapsed fueling support for the PAD-led protest movement that culminated his ouster.

Despite widespread disenchantment among the middle class, however, Thaksin has remained popular in rural areas mainly because his marketing efforts and a number of his policy initiatives were directly aimed at the rural majority. Indeed, there is much irony in the fact that a billionaire populist's most fervent advocates should be drawn from among the poorest segments of society.

The inability of Thaksin's opponents to unseat him in the hearts of his supporters partly reflects the PAD's own failings. As it struggles to rid Thailand of what it calls the "Thaksin System", the PAD plays on fears that the monarchy is under threat from Thaksin and his cronies and warns that only a change in the system can limit corruption.

The PAD's answer is new system whereby 70% of representatives would be nominated 'good people' while only 30% of the government would be elected through popular suffrage. Such a proposal naturally has little appeal to the rural majority who would be effectively disenfranchised.

Thus the PAD has been more successful in creating a rural-urban political divide than in unseating Thaksin.

Unless his opponents can tune into the genuine aspirations of the majority, Thaksin, the man who refuses to go quietly, is likely to be with us for many years to come.