Word: vejjajiva
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Thailand's Democrat Party hasn't won a popular national election in more than a decade. But on Dec. 15, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the 44-year-old leader of the oldest Thai political party, was chosen in a slender majority by the country's parliament as the nation's fifth Prime Minister in a year. Beleaguered Thais hope that his leadership will put an end to a turbulent few years during which one PM was deposed in an army coup and a sustained anti-government protest movement ended in the removal of three others, as well as the takeover and closure...
...bloody military crackdown on democracy protesters in 1992, and the regionwide economic crash five years later. "We restored political calm and laid the ground for economic recovery," says Korn Chatikavanij, the party's deputy secretary general. "Our record in government is solid." Democrats are also banking on Abhisit Vejjajiva, 43, their fresh-faced, Oxford-educated leader. Abhisit is clearly Prime Ministerial material, but remains untested in high public office and is said to lack the common touch. Samak dismisses Abhisit as an "unripe mango," but comparative youth could be an advantage in a Cretaceous...
...finds the scenes enthralling, sparking a political awakening unusual in any kid, much less the scion of a privileged Thai-Chinese family. Just three years later, a violent military crackdown would bring this brief experiment in Thai democracy to an end. But by that point, the boy, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was studying overseas in Britain. "I experienced the optimism of the 1973 democratic revolution, but I wasn't there for the disillusionment of the 1976 massacre," recalls Abhisit, who at age 27 was voted in as one of Thailand's youngest-ever parliamentarians. "Maybe that's what made me believe...
...Chris Baker, co-author of Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand, "I can't see how a small income stimulus is going to do anything." Thaksin's political rivals saw defensiveness in his actions. "He certainly seems to have lost the impression that he is invincible," says Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of the opposition Democrat Party. Still, Abhisit concedes, "It would be premature to say that the PM could not recover...
...meat, which he claims is the best to be found in Thailand. He wants his tiger population to swell to 200 within a couple of years, and has opened a petting area for tiger cubs, which at three months old cuddle like house cats. The nagging question, says Leonie Vejjajiva, a founder of the Wild Animal Rescue Foundation of Thailand, is whether a petting zoo--the feeding costs alone come to $8 a day per animal--and 20,000 crocodiles will generate the kind of money Somphong needs to turn a profit. The suspicion--open or unspoken--is that some...