Word: thaksin
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Thaksin grew up not far from that hotel, in Sankampaeng, near Chiang Mai, the second of 10 siblings. His father, a Chinese merchant who tried his hand at jobs ranging from bus driving to running a movie theater, was a modest success who would eventually rise to serve in parliament. Thaksin has steadily propagated the myth that he grew up impoverished. His aunt, Chansom Shinawatra, 78, however, shrugs when asked about the Shinawatra family circumstances: "We did well." Well enough, according to some of Thaksin's childhood friends, for the strapping, big-eared boy to own the only bicycle...
...Indeed, Thaksin does possess that rarest commingling of attributes: stellar academic prowess combined with an easy-going cool. For a math whiz, he doesn't come across as being only about differential calculus and regression analysis?he successfully communicates greater depth and a sort of popular-kid charisma. His aunt remembers him as always being a leader, even in the days when he and the other boys were making banana-tree stalks into toy horses and riding around, pretending to be cowboys...
...Thaksin were just an A-student, however, he wouldn't have risen to such lofty political heights. He attributes his political successes to his early business failures. After graduating from the Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy?he says he attended the military academy and then the police academy because he didn't want to attend a co-ed engineering school?he married Pojarmarn Damapong, the daughter of a police general. Along with his new bride, he moved to the United States, enrolling in a doctoral program at Sam Houston State University in Texas. The future Prime Minister earned his tuition...
...through his wife that he secured the connections that would launch his first successful business: leasing computers to the police department. This venture would also be the first to bear the taint of cronyism and conflict of interest that has also been a hallmark of Thaksin's vast financial success. He insists there was no impropriety to his working for the police department while he was leasing it equipment. His wife ran the operation, almost as a blind trust, Thaksin has always said. (Business partners who knew him during that period say Thaksin was always intimately involved in running...
...crucial government concessions, he has also been a bold innovator in numerous markets. His early bids for the pager business and the mobile phone business, and his gumption in launching the first Thai satellite when most analysts and experts said that wasn't a viable business are all achievements Thaksin can take credit for. But like most successful businessmen who are handed virtual monopolies, as Thaksin was with his most profitable enterprise, his mobile phone empire, he sometimes overstates the role his business acumen played in securing his windfall...