Word: somchai
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...just what the thousands of protesters camped out at Thailand's leadership compound have been demanding since they besieged Government House three weeks ago. On September 17, Thailand's parliament elected Somchai Wongsawat as the country's new Prime Minister, replacing embattled political veteran Samak Sundaravej, who only served in the top post for just over six months...
...nothing more than a puppet of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who himself had been deposed by a bloodless military coup in 2006. A billionaire tycoon who now lives in self-imposed exile in Britain, Thaksin has been charged with corruption in several different cases. (On the same day Somchai was voted in, the Supreme Court issued a third arrest warrant against Thaksin for failing to show up in court.) But even though Samak is gone and his predecessor charged with criminal wrongdoing, the Thaksin connection remains. Somchai, a former judge who served in Samak's cabinet as Education Minister...
...Instead, the PPP settled on the 61-year-old Somchai, whose cautious demeanor bespeaks two decades spent in the judiciary. Somchai is a career bureaucrat and one of the PPP's most respected politicians. But his marriage to Thaksin's sister, who also served as a parliamentarian, makes him unacceptable to the PAD, which accuses Thaksin of having bought many of the rural voters who swept him into office with a record mandate. "[Somchai] is Thaksin's brother-in-law and will be even more his proxy than Samak ever was," Chamlong Srimuang, one of the PAD's leaders, told...
...Somchai, who was named as caretaker Prime Minister when Samak was stripped of that position last week, quickly lifted the state of emergency the former P.M. had declared after clashes between the PAD and a pro-government group turned deadly late last month. The move was, in part, designed to calm the battered stock market and send a message to tourists that Thailand was stable again - a badly needed signal given that hotel occupancy is down roughly 40% from last year...
...this predominantly Buddhist nation. His government has also revived the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center, a peace and development agency credited with keeping a lid on the violence until Thaksin dismantled it in 2002; kick-started the investigation into the 2004 abduction of a prominent Muslim human-rights lawyer, Somchai Neelaphaijit, who is still missing; and last week announced the formation of a special economic zone to boost development in the impoverished region...