Word: rak
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...Thaksin and his populist policies, like cheap credit and debt moratoriums. Samak has vowed to grant amnesty to 111 politicians convicted last June by a Constitutional Tribunal of electoral fraud, including the former prime minister. The judges banned them from political activity for five years and dissolved their Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party. Samak's pledge has the PPP, essentially a reconstituted TRT, leading in every opinion poll...
...Isaan a key battleground, dinosaurs again roam the region - political ones this time. Lumbering onto a campaign stage in this sleepy town is veteran politician Samak Sundaravej, 72, the right-wing firebrand who leads the People Power Party (PPP). The PPP is an ill-disguised facsimile of Thai Rak Thai (TRT), the party outlawed after the Thai military overthrew its leader, the multi-billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, in September 2006. The TRT's Bangkok headquarters is now occupied by the PPP, and the two parties' logos are almost identical. So are their policies, such as cheap health care and easy loans...
...those of its archrival, the Democrat Party. "You'll notice that all the parties are populist these days," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. Those populist TRT policies won Thaksin two terms in office and raised the expectations of an entire electorate. "Thai Rak Thai has profoundly changed Thailand," says Thitinan. "People have discovered that they've been neglected. They want better lives. They have hopes and dreams." What he calls "the ghost of TRT" hovers over the polling booths...
...speech gets only polite applause. "Yasothon people are very hard to please," explains Sombat Phaopaeng, 31, an ice cream vendor doing a brisk trade at the rally on this sweltering morning. "They like Thai Rak Thai, they like Thaksin. But they don't like these particular candidates...
...approval rating in a referendum on Aug. 19, the junta appears committed to carrying out its pledge to hold elections by year's end. But Thaksin, who has been charged with corruption, is in exile, living mostly in London, while top members of his Thai Rak Thai Party have been banned from politics after a junta-appointed tribunal convicted them of electoral fraud in May. That leaves the Democrats in their strongest position since losing power to Thaksin back in 2001. Hardly a cocky politician, Abhisit is predicting success in December. "I believe that democracy will reward the Democrats...