Word: abhisit
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Thailand's Democrat Party hasn't won a popular national election in more than a decade. But on Dec. 15, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the 44-year-old leader of the oldest Thai political party, was chosen in a slender majority by the country's parliament as the nation's fifth Prime Minister in a year. Beleaguered Thais hope that his leadership will put an end to a turbulent few years during which one PM was deposed in an army coup and a sustained anti-government protest movement ended in the removal of three others, as well as the takeover and closure...
...internationally respected as the incoming, Oxford-educated Prime Minister is, Abhisit helms a coalition that is shaky at best. In order to form a government, the Democrat Party aligned with one of its most vocal critics, Newin Chidchob. An erstwhile ally of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who now lives in exile after being convicted in absentia on abuse of power charges, Newin has made his reputation as a hard-nosed pork-barrel specialist. His brand of politics hardly hews to the more urban-centered intellectualism of the Democrats. Indeed, Thailand may be returning to the days of weak coalitions...
...uneasy alignment of Abhisit and Newin reflects a fundamental rift in Thai society between disaffected rural voters and a disgusted urban elite that cannot fathom the string of populist - and sometimes iron-fisted - leaders whom the masses have been choosing to represent them. Bangkok may gleam with malls and high-rises, but most of Thailand is still a poor country of rice farmers. The Democrats, with the exception of a support base in the Muslim-dominated south, have yet to convince rural voters that their party has the best interests of most Thais in mind. Abhisit has had a hard...
...crises: the bloody military crackdown on democracy protesters in 1992, and the regionwide economic crash five years later. "We restored political calm and laid the ground for economic recovery," says Korn Chatikavanij, the party's deputy secretary general. "Our record in government is solid." Democrats are also banking on Abhisit Vejjajiva, 43, their fresh-faced, Oxford-educated leader. Abhisit is clearly Prime Ministerial material, but remains untested in high public office and is said to lack the common touch. Samak dismisses Abhisit as an "unripe mango," but comparative youth could be an advantage in a Cretaceous...
...Abhisit proposes to fix that by amending the constitution should he assume the PM post. That could mean yet another referendum. "I have faith that the electorate will do what's right," he says, surprising words perhaps for a Bangkok patrician whose party was overwhelmed by Thaksin's populist tactics six years ago. Whatever happens, at least one former Prime Minister is confident about Thailand's future. "We're good at improvising," says Anand Panyarachun, who steered the nation during two separate stints in the early 1990s. "We may not be as systematic as some other countries in our democracy...