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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
The stars are looking good for Thailand's Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra — at least they were in late 2003. Amidst some dire predications of a difficult year ahead for the ruling coalition government, Thaksin upset fortune-teller circles by applying CEO criteria, suggesting that if they made wrong predictions they should quit. At least one fortune-teller still ventured that should the government hold elections at the beginning of 2005, Thai Rak Thai (TRT) — the dominant party in the increasingly quasi-coalition government — would easily win over 400 seats in the 500-seat House of Representatives. This was not just stargazing. Thaksin's claim that TRT would win 400 seats was his chosen sword of 2003, used to threaten coalition partners with impending irrelevance, and to taunt the beleaguered Democrats with the possibility of permanent opposition. Of course, Thaksin had little need of the stars, having already expressed astounding confidence that he will last two full terms as prime minister, and, furthermore, “when I step down a new leader of the party will be prime minister for another eight years… and then the people will give us another four years, that is twenty years. Then I will ask the people to choose another party, which will have waited in the wings for so long.” Thaksin has not always been so brazen. In a reflective moment several years ago, he confessed, “I am just a human being. People who are in power for a long time may acquire a self-delusion that they're the best.”
Events in late 2003 and through to the first half of 2004 have somewhat deflated Thaksin's ambition of leading Thailand's first elected single party government. Indeed, at the time of writing, it appeared as if the Thaksin star was quickly fading to a dim light surrounded by the burning flames of unresolved social, economic and political questions that Thaksin's style of quasi-CEO managerialism has failed to quell.
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