Word: shinawatra
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...Sunny Thailand may once have been a political bright spot in a region overshadowed by autocrats and juntas, but the last few years have been nothing short of chaos. In September 2006, after months of street protests against elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the military deposed him in a bloodless coup. (Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon, was subsequently banned from politics and now faces corruption charges, which he denies.) A year of uninspired army junta rule followed. In elections last December, voters, who had once handed Thaksin the largest mandate in recent Thai history, brought to power right-wing firebrand Samak...
...messy democracies that sometimes seem to be almost ungovernable. Asians are flexing their political muscles, exercising their civil rights vigorously even beyond the ballot box - and woe betide the leader who fails to deliver what he promises. Despite winning the presidencies of their respective countries by wide margins, Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand and Joseph Estrada of the Philippines were tossed out of office before their terms were up when public opinion turned against them. In recent parliamentary elections in Malaysia, victories by opposition party politicians weakened a coalition that has ruled the country for decades, paralyzing the government. In Indonesia...
...lucrative sale of TV rights, only a third of players starting games last season would have qualified to play for England. Foreigners now own eight of the 20 teams: Russian Roman Abramovich owns Chelsea, Americans George Gillett and Tom Hicks own Liverpool, and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra owns Manchester City...
After just three months in office, Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has already bested naysayers who predicted his coalition government wouldn't last two weeks. Although he said last year that he was handpicked to run by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed by a military coup in 2006, Samak has recently distanced himself from the controversial, populist ex-premier. Sitting in the neo-Italianate splendor of Bangkok's Government House, Samak tells TIME's Hannah Beech that he doesn't take direction from Thaksin - and describes in detail the green curry and pork-tongue stew...
...Bangkok has promised to rip up the country's current constitution, which was unveiled by the military junta that preceded Samak's ruling coalition. He has declared a no-holds-barred battle against Thailand's drug dealers, a fight that echoes a previous campaign by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the man widely considered to be Samak's political overlord. Samak has even vowed to imprison illegal immigrants who are members of a Burmese minority group on a deserted island if they insist on fleeing to Thailand because of alleged human-rights abuses back home. But this week, Samak found...