Word: abhisit
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Yawning Gap Anger on the streets is directed not only at current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, an Oxford-educated economist, but also at an entire political and military establishment that many in the lower classes believe lives only to enrich itself at the common man's expense. For the red shirts it doesn't matter that Abhisit appears to be a rare clean politician in a country where politics and corruption seem as closely linked as mango and sticky rice. Nor is it significant to them that during his 15 months in power the Prime Minister has unveiled a raft...
...Instead, the red shirts are incensed that Abhisit is in office at all. In December 2007, in the first postcoup election, Thai voters cast the most ballots for a Thaksin proxy party. As fears grew that Thaksin might be pardoned by his allies and stage a political comeback, the yellow shirts responded by occupying the Prime Minister's office complex for months and hijacking Bangkok's two airports for a week. They only dispersed when a court dissolved the then ruling party as punishment for electoral fraud, allowing an Abhisit-led coalition to form through parliamentary backroom deals. "This...
...some of their supporters are rich entrepreneurs who profited during Thaksin's rule, they have reached into the language of Thailand's feudal past and characterized the current political crisis as pitting the phrai against the amataya. Roughly translated, that's a conflict between the serfs and the aristocracy. Abhisit struck back on local TV: "Thailand no longer has [such] social classes. People are equal under the constitution, although they have unequal opportunities." But the underclass isn't convinced. "The poor work hard and contribute to society," says Pasuk Phongpaichit, an economist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, "but they...
...Exile A telecom billionaire who has spent much of his self-exile in Dubai, Thaksin is an unlikely savior for a legion of bus commuters. He is everything a Thai farmer or construction worker is not: a pale-complexioned ethnic Chinese with nary a callus on his palms. (Abhisit fits that category too.) But Thaksin knew how to tap into a voter base long underexploited by traditional Thai politicians. His populist policies, which included heavily subsidized health care and microfinancing schemes, delighted the lower classes and helped Thaksin win the largest electoral mandate in Thai history. Economists have critiqued...
...Abhisit surely recognizes how wounding class divisions can be if left to fester. Currently, the richest 20% in Thailand controls two-thirds of the nation's wealth. "In many [Bangkok] districts, the richest and poorest have been living side by side for years and people feel these income gaps," says the PM's spokesman Panitan. "We may not see confrontations like in Latin America but, if not managed, this could be a big problem in Thailand, and demonstrations will be the order of the day for years to come...