He got the concession and he made it count. Riding on Shinawatra’s personal contacts, Thaicom and the telecom boom, the Shin Corporation became a successful paging service and later a cellular phone company boasting the largest subscriber base in Thailand. Shinawatra’s self-confidence made him hundreds of millions, and made his corporation one of the largest communications conglomerates worldwide.

THAKSIN SHINAWATRA, facing an election next year, some analyists say Thailand’s current prime minister functions more like the CEO of Thailand Inc..

Shinawatra drew upon that same self-confidence when he led his amorously named Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party to a smashing win in the 2001 elections – and he will need to pull it off again when Thailand votes in early 2005. This time around, Shinawatra won’t just settle for outright victory; even his critics grudgingly accept that he probably has that sealed. Instead, Shinawatra’s objective is 80 percent control of the 500-seat Parliament, one that will free his hands to single-mindedly pursue his economic agenda.

A business-like politician

Even in politics, Shinawatra functions as a businessman. He is, some analysts say, less the prime minister of his country than the CEO of Thailand Inc. He is compared by some, meanwhile, to long-reigning authoritarian leaders in Thailand’s neighbourhood – including Indonesia’s Suharto, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammad and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew.

Being a CEO, however, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Shinawatra rose to power just as Thailand, after three years of fiscal austerity, was on the cusp of recovering from the Asian financial crisis. By increasing government spending and lending by state banks, Shinawatra’s brand of “Thaksinomics” got Thailand’s economy roaring in a hurry. In 2003, it grew at 6.5 per cent; prompting Shinawatra, ever ready with a sound bite, to say he would aim for 8 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 2005.

Shinawatra has also displayed an astute sense of crisis management, a quality forged more in the furnaces of boardrooms than in the quick heat of politics. Three major upheavals – SARS, the avian flu epidemic and violence in Thailand’s Muslim-dominated south – punctuated his term, and Shinawatra dealt with each of them firmly and decisively. Like many CEOs, Shinawatra has, in three eventful years, become the image of his organisation. The hardened cynic will attribute that to constant and blatant self-promotion, but there is the undeniable element of his huge popularity as well. Like it or not, Shinawatra has become the chubby, beatific face of a blossoming Thailand.

The other side of the leader

But every blossom, as Thailand’s Buddhists have it, is home to a worm. Shinawatra’s detractors would gleefully agree. The prime minister has been accused of being too much the CEO, and of being undemocratic and authoritarian. Thailand’s democracy, wrestled from a military junta with difficulty in 1973, is regarded preciously by its citizens, and any evidence – or accusations – of trespassing prompts boos, hisses and unfavourable poll results countrywide.

In the lead-up to elections, epithets will fly more furiously; the first few have already taken wing. A recent chorus of academics, authors and even otherwise-peaceable Buddhist monks have spoken out against Shinawatra. “Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand,” a book already being dubbed Thailand’s literary “Fahrenheit 9-11,” calls his social vision “medieval” and concludes he has “rolled back a quarter century of democratic development.”

The authors, economist Pasuk Phongpaichit and British historian Chris Baker, are known for their investigations into the grimy underbelly of Thai business and politics. Their denouncement of cronyism, corruption and cult-of-personality tendencies by the Shinawatra administration carries considerable weight in Thailand. Sixteen other prominent writers have been so successful with their contributions to the bluntly named “Seeing through Thaksin,” that a second volume has been hastily commissioned in time for elections.

Ominous signs

Even Shinawatra’s most prominent claim to a second term – “It’s the economy, stupid!” – may yet rebound on him. Ammar Siamwalla, one of Thailand’s leading economists, predicts an end to easy growth.

“That era is over,” he told the Straits Times recently. “Now we have to make choices as to how much money to put into infrastructure. Do we invest smartly, or are we going to repeat mistakes, perhaps because of cronyism and corruption?”

Not surprisingly, these allegations have taken strong root almost singularly in the more literate, urban Bangkok, and its 10 million citizens delivered a shock to Shinawatra by electing a governor from the opposition Democratic Party. Thai Rak Thai did not even field a candidate, not being able to unearth one who could fight the good fight.

Analysts see these as signs – slender, but definitive – that Shinawatra may have to work harder than expected to keep the Thai Rak Thai flag aloft. And whatever else is said, Shinawatra has rarely shirked hard work. Months ahead of the actual polling date, he has already hit the trail in rural Thailand, reinforcing a voter base that, by all accounts, loves him to bits.

THAILAND’S VILLAGES have seen prosperity percolate into the countryside, giving Shinawatra rural support.

That’s not surprising. Thailand’s prosperity has certainly percolated into its villages, and headlines about human rights or corruption do not make it into the countryside through effectively Shinawatra-controlled broadcast media. To sweeten the deal, 77,000 rural communities have been bestowed soft loans of up to USD 24,000 under a “village fund” scheme, and other grants for each village are not viewed as earning Shinawatra any enemies.

Money has also been talking elsewhere. Shinawatra’s clout and power have managed to persuade significant numbers of politicians, especially in Democratic strongholds, to barnstorm Thai Rak Thai in recent weeks. It has given the party 352 seats already, and in the long term, may shove the pendulum of fortune even more powerfully in Shinawatra’s favour come February.

Clearly the opposition has its work cut out if it is to even jolt Thai Rak Thai out of what some call complacency, let alone deliver any real scares. It’s up against a brutally powerful party, an administration with a cast-iron economic track record and an electorate fawning over its government. But primarily, it’s up against the sheer self-confidence of a man who once audaciously bid huge sums of money because he knew he wouldn’t fail.

Thaksin Shinawatra
“Better to die than to live like a loser.” At his Police Cadet School (PCS), Thaksin Shinawatra had that single motto dinned ceaselessly into him, and nobody can say he hasn’t lived up to it. In 1973, Shinawatra graduated top of his class at the PCS and earned a government scholarship to study abroad.

In rapid succession he earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in criminal justice from American universities, but Shinawatra chose to return to Thailand and a glittering career in the police force. His family’s entrepreneurial spirit was bound to rear its head sooner or later, and after contracting with the police department to supply software, he established the Shinawatra Company.

Shinawatra’s ventures led him into telecommunications, where he made billions, setting up a cellular phone company that now boasts the largest subscriber base in Thailand. He entered politics in 1994 to, as he proclaimed, “clean it up.” His Thai Rak Thai party, formed in 1998, stormed the 2001 elections and catapulted him to the prime minister’s seat.

In the three-and-a-half years since, Shinawatra, 55, has been able to divide opinion like few Thai politicians before him. His corporate style of functioning, with a heavy accent on accountability and reform, have kept alive an economy that threatened, at one point, to go under courtesy SARS and bird flu. His maverick image – at one point, he was considering a bid for a stake in the Liverpool Football Club – has become a symbol for a resurgent, bold Thailand, an Asian Tiger that is living up to its roar. Shinawatra’s critics, on the other hand, vilify him for his rough hand with human rights and democratic freedoms, seeing too much of the autocratic CEO in him. As quick to pounce on irony as any opposition anywhere, they point out that this corrupt administration is antithetical to the clean politics that Shinawatra himself promised during his campaigns. But the real judgement is now just a few months away, when Thailand decides how much more of Shinawatra it wants to see.