No Room For 'losers' In New Thailand

[george]

No room for 'losers' in new Thailand

Woe betide those who challenge Thaksin Shinawatra, Asia's new political strongman.

Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's billionaire Prime Minister, takes his football seriously. A few weeks ago, when North Korea humiliated the home side 4-1 in a World Cup qualifying round, a furious Thaksin leapt from his seat and lambasted the Thai team for being too slow and too complacent.

Within days, head coach Carlos Roberto Carvalho had announced his reluctant resignation, along with team manager Thavatchai Sajakul and his deputy. Thavatchai, an MP in Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party, was frank about the consequences of the North Korean victory: "It was a loss of face for the Prime Minister."

There is no room for losers in the Thailand of Thaksin Shinawatra, who, while deriding the national soccer team, was busy planning a public lottery to finance his personal fancy of buying a stake in Liverpool Football Club in England. Those who challenge the writ of the new strongman of Asian politics often find themselves sidelined or unemployed. Since he was swept to power in a landslide 3 years ago, Thaksin has transformed and energised Thai politics with his aggressive "can-do" leadership style, turning a flagging economy into one of the success stories of the region, infusing a moribund bureaucracy with his modern management credo and putting Thailand firmly back on the regional and global map.

Along the way, the 54-year-old leader has also ridden roughshod over the country's nascent democracy, independent media and legal institutions, crushing rivals and hounding critics. His high-profile campaigns against drug traffickers and organised criminals have left thousands dead, while hundreds more have been killed in an Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand inflamed by heavy-handed security forces.

Thaksin's passion for football says much about the man who began his working life as a policeman, built a telecommunications empire from scratch and is now ranked among the world's richest men. Before he flick-passed his controversial Liverpool bid to a group of wealthy associates, one Thai political commentator observed: "This is an ego that wants to control everything between the Earth and the Sun."

Two of the men Thaksin admires most have similar obsessions - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (owner of soccer club AC Milan) and Harrods department store chief Mohamed al-Fayed (owner of Fulham Football Club), with whom Thaksin often stays in London, taking sight-seeing tours in his vintage Rolls-Royce.

The parallels with Berlusconi are too close for the comfort of many Thai liberals. Like the Italian leader, Thaksin is a tycoon turned politician who runs a large slice of his country's media and who essentially bought his way into power with the tactics of a hostile corporate takeover. Like Berlusconi, he is an obsessive autocrat, impatient with the checks and balances of democratic government, a publicity-seeker averse to press he does not own or control, and a leader with an alarming propensity to shoot from the lip.

Thaksin is notorious for his political gaffes. The SARS outbreak, the bird flu epidemic and the spread of regional terrorism into Thailand were all denied by the Prime Minister before the truth made a fool of him. He has undermined national carrier Thai Airways by declaring that its service "sucks" (before buying into his own budget airline) and recently claimed several police killed by Islamic insurgents "deserved to die" for failing to be more vigilant.

But Thaksin's energy and enthusiasm mostly enable him to weather such self-inflicted accidents. "He remains irrepressibly optimistic and confident. He is also engaging, quick-witted and amusing," says a senior regional official. "He is able to reach out to the people and they like him."

Thaksin plotted his political success with the same precision that he built his business empire. A minister in the revolving-door governments that mismanaged Thailand through the 1990s, he saw a window of opportunity and leapt through it. His party, Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais), was founded just three years before the last elections, but he quickly bankrolled it into the most formidable political machine in modern Thai history. Winning a comfortable majority of 248 seats in the 438-seat House of Representatives, Thaksin then forged an unassailable coalition with two other parties that has driven the opposition Democrats into disarray.

Riding a wave of popular discontent with the continuing fallout from the 1997 economic crash, Thaksin stitched up the support of rural Thailand with a pork-barrel platform that froze $US1.6 billion ($A2.3 billion) in farmers' debts for three years, gave $25,000 enterprise loans to each of Thailand's 70,000 villages and introduced a health scheme under which ordinary Thais pay just 30 baht ($A1.05) for any medical procedure.

While economists derided a program that has drained Government coffers and stretched medical services, the spending boost has helped drive a continuing economic recovery. In 2001, the year Thaksin came to power, Thailand's growth languished at about 1.8 per cent. It hit 6.7 per cent last year on the back of a 20 per cent jump in exports, and is forecast to exceed 7 per cent this year, despite the impact of unrest in the south, rising oil prices and the bird flu outbreak, which killed eight people earlier this year and dealt a body blow to the export poultry industry.

The rural programs have given a boost to the poor and ensured a level of support that most analysts expect will deliver Thaksin a second four-year term in the elections due by next January.

"From the ordinary people's perspective, he has done what he promised to do in the last election to help the rural sector, and that's rare for a politician," says Pichai Chuensuksawadi, editor-in-chief of the Bangkok Post newspaper and a frequent critic. "When they took over, it looked as though the economy was about to fall off the cliff. You can't deny that he's got things moving, but he remains ultra-sensitive and intolerant of any kind of criticism."

If Thaksin's tenure has made most Thais better off financially, it has certainly done no harm to his own hip pocket. Three years ago, Forbes magazine estimated the Thaksin fortune - most of it now held in the names of his wife and children - at $US1.2 billion. Analysts believe it has at least doubled since then.

The Thaksin family now controls more than 10 per cent of stocks on the Thai exchange, and that does not include the vast amount of property and other assets held in unlisted companies. Last year, the value of the family holding company, Shin Corp, almost quadrupled.

The spoils of power have not all been monetary. Relatives of the Prime Minister have had flourishing careers under his Government. Thaksin promoted his cousin, General Chaisit Shinawatra, to commander of the army, a post that also gives him a seat on the board of the Thai Military Bank and control of the military-owned Channel 5 TV network. He made his brother-in-law deputy police chief.

Thaksin's wife and their children are also accused of reaping huge gains from preferential treatment in Government deals. The opposition claims his wife, Khunying Pojaman Shinawatra, has snapped up several parcels of prime Government land well below market value as a result of dubious tendering processes.

Opponents say the Thaksin leadership style, while enriching family and friends, has impoverished the country's democracy, painfully rebuilt after decades of military rule. "Thai democracy is being eroded. The election commission, the anti-graft commission, the constitutional council - all these institutions are being stacked with Thaksin supporters, and the independent media is being undermined," says Kraisak Choonhavan, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman.

Kraisak argues that Thaksin's crackdowns on the drug trade and organised crime, and his use of excessive force against Islamic insurgents, have undermined the rule of law while failing to answer the underlying problems. Human rights groups say the anti-drug crusade, in which at least 2500 mostly small-time offenders have died, has sanctioned a culture of extra-judicial killing.

The critics also believe Thaksin's hardline approach to the drug trade sits uncomfortably with his cosy political relationship with the Burmese military junta. Soon after he came to power, Thaksin released a secret intelligence report on the extent of the drug trade inside Burma and its connections with the regime, and vowed to take a stand. A few months later, the tables were turned; Thaksin was feted on a visit to Rangoon and then launched a crackdown on dissident Burmese exiles living in Thailand and non-government organisations supporting them. A partnership between a subsidiary of Shin Corp and a company owned by the son of Burmese Prime Minister Khin Nyunt now holds a virtual monopoly on internet and mobile phone services in the country.

Beyond Burma, Thaksin has succeeded in expanding Thailand's diplomatic profile and is seen as the emerging successor to Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad as a leader of the region. His decision to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as peacekeepers to East Timor, has aligned Thailand more closely with the US at a time when most of his neighbours are keeping their distance from Washington.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, believes Thaksin's political success is beginning to wane. He says the Government's blundering responses to the bird flu crisis and the Islamic insurgency in the south, and growing perceptions that Thaksin has enriched himself in power, are starting to undermine popular support.

"For the last four years, our democratisation has slowed because of the new politics driven by Thaksin. While his top-down style of leadership was welcomed at the start, people are starting to have second thoughts. He has a good chance to be re-elected but there'll be no honeymoon second time around."

--theage.com.au 2004-07-03

[Norman d'Plume]

What a breath of fresh air to read things as they are. Only wish our English language press would dare to print such an editorial.

One of the few statistics missing is the claim that this is the most corrupt government since 1972.

[maerim]

There is no room for losers in the Thailand of Thaksin Shinawatra,

Oh dear, oh dear, if that's the case there must be a few sphincters going in and out of the expat community in the bars of Thailand now.

As we all know there are no "losers" here just because they have not a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of.

It's only a tempory setback in their fianances just give 'em a few grand and they will sort your finances out in no time.

[p1p]

Perfect example of Kleptocratic Oligarchy in power. Methinks the election will be called the earlier the better if Khun T & Kronies wish to stay in power.

Beginning to meet some anti-T-activists in the strangest of places.

[maerim]

$25,000 enterprise loans to each of Thailand's 70,000 villages

Is there any data on how many of these loans have been paid back if any?

[stroll]

I confirm that one has been paid, I checked personally with the local branch of the farmer's banking cooperative to see that my GF took my money there.

"Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's billionaire Prime Minister, takes his football seriously. A few weeks ago, when North Korea humiliated the home side 4-1 in a World Cup qualifying round, a furious Thaksin leapt from his seat and lambasted the Thai team for being too slow and too complacent."

It is time Thailand took a proactive stance to punish totalitarian nations through tougher sanctions.

[stumonster]

$25,000 enterprise loans to each of Thailand's 70,000 villages

Is there any data on how many of these loans have been paid back if any?

is there any data on the proportion of these loans that were used to purchase mobile phones with AIS sim cards in them?

[stroll]

I can positively confirm one in this regard as well.

[Dutchy2]

No room for 'losers' in new Thailand

What can Thailand actually do better than the rest of the world apart from cooking Tom Yam Kung and top scores in corruption...?

I thought that's why they were going to build the fence at the border of Myanmar, to prevent losers from getting out and causing an embarrasing loss of face for the kingdom..

[stroll]

"I thought that's why they were going to build the fence at the border of Myanmar, to prevent losers from getting out and causing an embarrasing loss of face for the kingdom.. "

Why are you so upset, were you planning to escape that way? Losing your 'face' wouldn't be an embarrassment to the kingdom?

[royar2002]

Money

It's a gas

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

New car, caviar, four star daydream

Think I'll buy me a football team

[medicinebox]

No room for 'losers' in new Thailand

What can Thailand actually do better than the rest of the world apart from cooking Tom Yam Kung and top scores in corruption...?

I thought that's why they were going to build the fence at the border of Myanmar, to prevent losers from getting out and causing an embarrasing loss of face for the kingdom..

Manufacture quality goods for export at competitive prices.

But so can China.