Thaksin Shinawatra stepped off a private jet at Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport at 9 am on 22 August 2023, bowed, offered a garland before a portrait of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, and waved to hundreds of Red Shirt supporters. Hours later he was in prison. He had been away for 15 years.
A policeman who built a phone empire
Born on 26 July 1949 in San Kamphaeng, Chiang Mai, Thaksin grew up in one of the region’s richest families. His father, Loet, was an MP and ran a string of businesses that included cinemas, a petrol station and a car dealership. Thaksin attended Montfort College, graduated from the police cadet academy in 1973, and went to the United States for a master’s at Eastern Kentucky University in 1975 and a doctorate in criminal justice at Sam Houston State in Texas three years later.
Business came slowly. A silk shop, a cinema and an apartment building failed while he was still a policeman, leaving him more than 50 million baht in debt. He founded Advanced Info Service in 1986 as a computer rental firm, resigned his commission as a police lieutenant colonel in 1987, and kept building. AIS grew into Thailand’s largest mobile operator, and many of his ventures were folded into Shin Corporation.
Politics and power
He came into politics in late 1994 through Chamlong Srimuang of the Palang Dharma Party and was made foreign minister that December. Thaksin founded Thai Rak Thai in 1998, and won a landslide in 2001. He was the first elected Thai prime minister to serve a full term.
The record was mixed. Poverty fell by half in four years, according to figures cited for his tenure, and he launched the 30-baht universal healthcare scheme and a large infrastructure programme that included Suvarnabhumi Airport. His “war on drugs” brought over 2,000 extrajudicial killings and condemnation from human rights groups. Thai Rak Thai won again in 2005 with the highest turnout in the country’s history.
The conservative establishment, meaning the army, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the Bangkok elite and royalists, saw his rule as corrupt and authoritarian. In January 2006 his family sold its Shin Corporation shares tax-free, and mass protests led by the Yellow Shirts followed. He called a snap election that the opposition boycotted and the Constitutional Court invalidated. On 19 September 2006, while he was in New York for a United Nations meeting, the military removed him in a bloodless coup.
Exile and the family business
His party was outlawed and he was banned from politics. Facing criminal cases that included corruption and tax evasion, he left Thailand in 2008. He was convicted in absentia of abuse of power. His police rank was revoked in September 2015. In exile he stayed in touch with followers online under the alias “Tony Woodsome.”
Voters kept electing governments loyal to him, in 2007 and again in 2011, when his younger sister Yingluck became prime minister. The military ousted her government in 2014. His daughter Paetongtarn became prime minister in 2024.
The return
The timing in August 2023 looked staged. Parliament confirmed the business tycoon Srettha Thavisin as prime minister, heading a Pheu Thai-led coalition, within hours of Thaksin’s landing. That coalition included parties tied to the military that had toppled both Thaksin and Yingluck, and speculation of a backroom deal with the royalist-military establishment spread quickly.
He was driven in a police convoy to the Supreme Court, then to prison, to serve eight years for three convictions handed down in his absence: one tied to Shin Corp, one to a bank loan, and a lottery case. He later received a royal pardon and parole.
Mark S. Cogan of Kansai Gaidai University called the comeback “lose-lose” for Pheu Thai’s credibility. Siripan Nogsuanat of Chulalongkorn University saw it as a signal to the conservative Senate that Thaksin was now on its side, aimed at checking the rising Move Forward Party. For his supporters it was personal. “No matter which land he’s in, wherever he goes, I love only Thaksin and always have,” Boonying Pim-Makaed from Loei told Reuters.
Sources
- Thaksin Shinawatra returns to Thailand — why now?
- Ex-PM Thaksin returns to Thailand after 15 years in exile; jailed 8 years
- Thaksin Shinawatra – Wikipedia
