BANGKOK: Thailand’s billionaire Shinawatra dynasty has dominated the kingdom’s politics for 25 years, despite coups and court cases including Friday’s (Aug 22) lese-majeste acquittal of its patriarch.
A Bangkok court cleared 76-year-old Thaksin Shinawatra of breaching Thailand’s tough royal insult laws in an interview with South Korean media a decade ago.
AFP looks at the Shinawatra family’s turbulent quarter-century of dominating Thai politics and battling the kingdom’s traditional conservative elite.
FOUNDING FATHER
Thaksin served as a police officer before making his fortune in telecoms and launching the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, promising to use his business savvy to uplift the rural poor.
His populist policies won the devotion of countryside voters but the ire of the pro-monarchy, pro-military establishment that regarded him as an insurgent threat to the traditional social order.
He became premier in 2001 and was the first democratically elected Thai prime minister to serve a full term.
He was then re-elected in a landslide by voters grateful for cash injections amid the Asian financial crisis, leading the first Thai party ever to secure an overall majority alone.
However, Thaksin was dogged by corruption allegations and months of protests. Tanks rolled into Bangkok while he was on an overseas trip in September 2006 and the military toppled his government.
He purchased Manchester City despite his Thai assets being frozen the following year, and later sold the British football club for a sizeable profit.
Thaksin took himself into exile in 2008 but never stopped commenting on national affairs – or, according to his critics, meddling in them.
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