Who is Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand’s Politics?

Thaksin Shinawatra is one of the key figures of Thai politics, and the main reason why the protests started in November. 

Thaksin Shinawatra was the Prime Minister of Thailand between 2001 and 2006 and he is the brother of the current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Even though not directly, Thaskin Shinawatra has controlled the country’s politics for more than a decade.

He was removed from power in 2006 in a military coup, and since then he has been living in exile in various places, most recently in Dubai. He has been accused of corruption and authocratic rule, which is why he was deposed in 2006.

The protests are taking place because Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party, which currently governs the country, proposed an amnesty bill that would allow Thaksin Shinawatra to come back to Thailand without facing any corruption charges. The protesters believe that Mr. Thaksin is still controlling the current Pheu Thai government even if he is in exile.

Mr. Thaksin is a very dualized political character. He is very popular among rural voters, which has allowed his party to win the last five elections, and at the same time he is totally disliked by urban and middle-class voters, who are the ones carrying out the protests, and by Bangkok’s rich elite.

Thaksin Shinawatra studied criminal justice in the United States in 1973. He started his professional career as a police officer. However, when he returned from the United States in the late 1980s, he developed a successful telecommunications empire.

He became involved in politics in 1998 and he turned out to be very popular among rural poor voters very quickly. His political campaign consisted of offering cheap medical care, debt relief, and of remarking that there’s a “Bangkok elite” that prevents the people living in rural areas from enriching.

He won the 2001 elections with a great majority of votes and he was able to set up the elected government through a full term in office, becoming the first prime minister in Thailand’s history to be able to do so.

However, a lot of corruption scandals have affected Mr. Shinawatra, which led him to be ousted in a military coup in 2006. He has been accused of buying the votes of the people living in rural and poor areas. He has also been blamed of illegally influencing a land purchase deal. Mr. Thaksin bought a prime plot of land in Bangkok in 2003 for a very cheap price ($24m), and the land, owned by a government agency, had earlier been valued at $66m.

The biggest scandal that has affected him is the decision of selling some shares of his telecommunications company, Shin Corp, in 2006. The deal made him earn $1.9 bn, and it was later found out that he had not payed taxes in the sale and that he had avoided passing control of an important national asset to Singaporean investors. This provoked great protests and the military forced him out of the government.

Mr. Thaksin went in exile to London and said he would only return to Thailand to face corruption charges if he was guaranteed the trial would be fair. He came back in 2008 and he was sentenced to two years in prison. However, he went into exile again and hasn’t been in Thailand since then.

He became the country’s most famous fugitive, but he was still very popular in rural areas. During his years in exile, Thaksin Shinawatra has been in contact with the ministers of the Pheu Thai party, influencing the political decisions they had to take.

“We can contact him at all hours,” said Charupong Ruangsuwan to The New York Times, the interior minister and secretary general of Mr. Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party. “If we’ve got a problem , we give him a call.”

“He’s the one who formulates the Pheu Thai policies,” said Noppadon Pattama, a senior official in Mr. Thaksin’s party, who is also his personal lawyer. “Almost all the policies put forward during the last election came from him.”

Mr. Thaksin uses Skype and various social media applications like Whatsapp and Line to get in touch with the leaders of the party.

Protesters in Thailand claim that the biggest proof of Mr. Thaksin’s influence over the country’s politics is the election of Yingluck Shinawatra as a president in 2011. Ms. Yingluck, who has two degrees in politics, had never run for a government post before the 2011 election. She is the first woman to be elected as Prime Minister in Thailand. Her professional career consisted of being the managing director of AIS, the telecommunications firm owned by her brother.

Since she was elected president, the opposition Democrat Party has put forward that she is a puppet of his brother. According to them, her role is to maintain the popularity of the party among poor rural voters and serve as her brother’s representative while he governed from his overseas exile.

However, she has always stated that she was the one in charge of the government and that his brother just serves as a “moral support”.

“My family is a political family plus I have experience in business — I have been running a listed company for 20 years — so I will use the two competencies together to help Thailand improve, especially in terms of the economy,” she said when she was elected to prove her leadership.

Ms. Yingluck, like her brother, has also been involved in corruption scandals. She has recently been investigated for a very controversial rice subsidy scheme the government launched in 2011.

Thailand is one of the largest rice exporters in the world, but it has amassed great stockpiles of rice that have not been able to be sold. The rice policy certifies Thai farmers a much higher price for their rice than on the global market, and this way they can be compensated by the large amounts of rice that they cannot sell. However, it is very expensive to maintain and very vulnerable to corruption, especially because Ms. Yingluck is nominally the head of the National Rice Committee.

The possibility of Thaksin Shinawatra returning to Thailand without facing any corruption charges is provoking a great political turmoil in the country, with protests taking place since November.

Will this polarized political figure be able to come back to his country and continue influencing its politics without being in exhile, thanks to the help of his sister and his political party?