No room for 'losers' in new Thailand
- The Age,
July 3, 2004
...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...
"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.
...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.
...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.
No room for ‘losers’ in new Thailand
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