Word: thais
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...regional and religious lines. The man who most successfully exploited these divisions was Thaksin, the patron of the PPP now living in self-imposed exile in England. Using his leverage as one of Thailand's richest men, he successfully wooed lawmakers from several other political parties to join his Thai Rak Thai party in the late 1990s. Thai Rak Thai (TRT) dominated Thailand's political landscape for five years by appealing to the nation's rural poor who form the majority of voters, particularly in the northeast, with populist policies including cheap credit and debt moratoriums...
...Thai voter who longs for the return of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, then Samak Sundaravej is your man. An acid-tongued, fire-breathing ultra-conservative who brands his opponents communists and "street gangsters," the 72-year-old former Bangkok governor is running in the Dec. 23 national election on a platform the rural masses find irresistible: as he unabashedly declares, "I'm Thaksin's nominee." Samak, the nominal leader of the People Power Party (PPP), has promised that if elected he'll bring back Thaksin and his populist policies, like cheap credit and debt moratoriums. Samak has vowed...
...While Samak now rails against the military and its ouster of Thaksin, he hasn't always been aligned against them. Thai society was deeply polarized between left and right when Indochina fell under communist rule in 1975. On the morning of Oct. 6, 1976, police and right-wing paramilitary mobs invaded Thammasat University, raping, lynching and burning alive scores of students who were demonstrating for greater civil liberties. A few hours later, the military staged a coup. Samak was then appointed interior minister in one of Thailand's most repressive governments. Leftists and students were hunted down and jailed...
...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...
...next PM. So will healing the country. Suriyasai Katasila, secretary general of the Campaign for Popular Democracy, has accused the PPP of drawing up an "enemies list," something that the party's deputy secretary general Noppadon Pattama denies. "Let bygones be bygones," he says. "We should not fail the Thai people by arguing and quarreling." Noppadon says his party has adopted "a less confrontational style." If so, nobody has told PPP pit bull Chalerm Yubamrung, who has publicly vowed to "execute" Thaksin's foes. Chalerm, who is campaigning alongside Samak, covets the post of interior minister and, if elected, promises...