Conversations with Thaksin 9789814328685

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GIANTS

of

A S I A

FROM EXILE TO DELIVERANCE:

THAILAND’S POPULIST TYCOON TELLS i HIS STORY conversations with

THAKSIN TOM PLATE

ire Editions

Marshall Cavendish

©2011 Thomas Gordon Plate Research by Yena Kim. Photographs by Tom Plare and the household of Thaksin Shinawatra. Authors photograph on dust Jacket and page 251 courtesy of Hugh Ujihazy. Project editor; Lee Mei Lin Design by Bernard Go Kwang Meng. Cover illustration by PK. Cheng. Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196 AH rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of die copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300, Fax; (65) 6285 4871. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: w w marshallcavcfldish.com/genref Every effort has been made to contact the copyright owner for additional material used in this book. Any omissions will be subsequently corrected.

specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no events be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Other Marshall Cavendish Offices Marshall Cavendish Ltd. PO Box 65829, London EC1P INY, UK • Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA • Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Fir, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Watcana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand • Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lor 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tlga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Plate, Tom. Conversations with Thaksin ; from exile to deliverance : Thailand’s populist tycoon tells his story / Tom Plate. — Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2011. p, cm. - (Giants of Asia) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-981-4328*68-5 1. Thaksin Chinnawat, 1949- - Interviews. 2. Thaksin Chinnawat, 1949- — Pblirical and social views. 3. Ex-prime ministers - Thailand - Interviews. I. Tide. IL Series: Giants of Asia. DS578.32 959.3044092 — dc22

OCN742927619

Printed in Singapore by KWF Printing Pte Ltd

A Note on the Conversations

Most of the dialogue with Thaksin Shinawatra emerged from the setting of his suburban Dubai home-away-from-home in December 2010, and is put in that setting. There were four twohour sessions— then a fifth at a restaurant in the Burj Khalifa needle skyscraper downtown. About a half a year later, also in Dubai, we had an informal update session, one over dinner. In between there were several email exchanges, a phone call or two, and one lengthy Skype session between my home office in Los Angeles and Thaksin’s exile home in Emirates Hills, Dubai. A transcribing note: in his enunciation of English, the former prime minister of Thailand understandably employs Thai-like grammatical constructions and staccato pronunciations that are not difficult to understand in person— but when transcribed exactly as spoken make it next to impossible to easily read. And so for the sake of clarity of meaning and ease of understanding, I have transcribed the conversations from a kind of Thai-literal English to a smoother normal-appearing universal English. To have not done would not only have made the conversations difficult for the reader to follow but would have served to mislead the reader about the clarity and structure of the former prime ministers

thoughts. And on those rare instances when I was in doubt, I sought clarification. Please also note that, given the laws of sovereign Thailand, the monarch is accorded special status under lese majeste. These pointed laws are designed to provide the King and Queen protection from commentary that might be regarded as critical or disrespectful. Although this book has been, at least initially, published outside of Thailand, and thus is not technically subject to Thailand’s laws, it is intended that the book will be available in Thailand, in perhaps English as well as Thai. It is not the authors intention or desire to flout these laws, as long as they remain in force, and so the subject matter has been approached appropriately. In this connection, it must be said that at no time did Thaksin Shinawatra express in any of these conversations with me anything other than respect for the King and the Queen, and any implication to the contrary is not a reflection of the reality of our exchanges or anything the former prime minister said or meant to say. However, due to the increasingly assertive degree of prosecution of lese majeste, it seemed only prudent for publication and fair to the former prime minister, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra and his party to hold back certain turns of conversation until the prosecutorial climate changes, perhaps for a second edition.

Tom Plate Beverly Hills, California September 201 1

THANKING THOSE WHO HELPED MAKE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE In a Giants of Asia format, nothing much can happen unless tlie subject of the study is willing to open up. And so experts about Thailand who have read earlier drafts of this book expressed the belief that here we have, finally, Thaltsin Shinawatra at his most candid yet. For this, there really is no one else to thank except the former prime minister himself, who was unfailingly patient as this process unfolded, and helpful to the very end, not once asking to review a page or be tipped in advance as to what might appear. Many thanks to researcher Yena Kim, a former ace student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who is now in transit to graduate professional school, where she will earn her master’s degree in social work, and join ranks that include my brilliant and almost heroically dedicated wife Andrea in the worthy profession of American social work; she was the dogged fact-checker on this book, as she once was on my still-running syndicated political column. Immense gratitude, again, for the knowledgeable reading of

My (Mimi) Lu, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law

and Diplomacy, who was the crack researcher on the two prior ‘Giants’ books, and who now is a professional diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service. And thanks yet again to Anya (Zabolotnaya) Benton, a former teaching aide at UCLA.

Thanks especially to Bangkok resident Christopher Coles, the Jet-set artist and critically acclaimed painter of

the demi-world of Bangkok, in all its pathos and existential vitality; his knowledge of Thai politics is as deep as it is passionate. And hats off to two elegant but necessarily anonymous/mysterious gentlemen who cannot be named but whom you would be quite happy to meet: they both know Thailand inside and out. Special thanks to Suranand Vejjajiva, the Bangkokbased media commentator and former Thailand government minister [in the Thaksin years] who in the selfless interest, of history translated documents and newspaper accounts from the original Thai that helped us definitively re-construct the narrative of the 2006 coup in Bangkok (that portion of this book being the sole chapter that he worked on). Special thanks as well to Dr. Chiu Tsang, the president of Santa Monica College, often viewed (rightly in my view) as perhaps the best two-year college in the U.S.; it was his suggestion for a full chapter on Thaksin as sportsman, with an emphasis on

his run as proprietor of the Manchester City football team. And many thanks to Erin Boone., bilingual in Japanese and English, a graduate of the University of Utah, and a gifted transcriber, who now has been the transcriber on all three Giants of Asia books. And last but certainly not least, by any means: my talented colleagues and warm friends in Singapore, at the publishing house Marshall Cavendish, especially the gogetter Publisher and General Manager Chris Newson, who excels in both balancing the books as well as balancing author egos; and Violet Phoon and Mei Lin Lee, the latter being this books text editor; both are gifted not only with excellent literary taste and consistently deft editorial judgment bur, as importantly, that extra DNA of grounded common sense that provides vital ballast for works that ate immediate and yet ones that we hope might endure. Both of these literary ladies are gems. Finally, it has been fun and a tremendous privilege, in working this Giants of Asia series, to encounter some of Southeast Asia’s legendary book distributors and sellers, among whom the witty Leslie Lim of Pansing and the elegant Kenny Chan of Kinokuniya/Singapore have become, from my perspective anyway, far more than merely extremely effective commercial colleagues.

To all my former students— both at the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2008), and now to all my current ones at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles (2010-???)— if you feel you gained something of value from taking a class (or two . . . o r three) with Prof Tom, imagine how good he feels about making a difference in your life: for this is the dream of every professor.

So, to you all, I say, thank you very much indeed for that honor and opportunity.

Contents PREFACE *13 The Return of the Jedi *21 Going home: always the first thing on his mind

The Passion of the Thaksin • 40 Thailand can’t get rich if the poor stay poor

Rich Man, Poor Man *61 His own family was run like a rural mini-corporation

The Sporting Life • 73 Not even his toughest critics would ever say he didn’t know how to keep sqore

In the Line of Fire • 92 How lucky can one marked man get?

How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying *119 He had the magic touch, or a different sort of ‘touch’?

Two Days in September • 141 Suddenly he catches a very bad case of the coup

Around the World with 80 Passports *159 The man from Montenegro and from Nicaragua .. . and from???

Exile on Mall Street “179 From prime minister to ‘mall rat’, crowds are never a problem

Patton • 208 Full-speed ahead ... all the while tanking into a wall of other egos

Sister Act • 230 Going back home on the surprisingly potent petticoat-tails of Yingluck AFTERWORD •

243

APPENDIX • 245 Major government charges filed against Thaksin while PM—and while in exile—and their resolutions WORKS CONSULTED AND RECOMMENDED ABOUT THE AUTHOR * 2 5 1

• 250

Preface

MAYBE the most interesting fact about Thailand is that few people realize how relatively big and significant it is. In truth too many people think it is just ‘cute’. Most people don’t know that it’s a country with a population greater than France, Italy or the United Kingdom. And that its land mass is larger than them all, except France, where it is almost the same. So why do some people regard Thailand as if it’s nothing? Leaving aside our own ignorance, might it be the upsetting tendency of the former Siam to reven to the blunt instrument of the military coup amid almost any serious political crisis? Or is the problem its risque reputation for offering visitors the wildest sex industry this side of Las Vegas? Or perhaps it’s the residual effect on international public opinion of silly Hollywood popularizations, such as the infamous (and truly ridiculous) King and I movie? (Not to mention that the cliches of The Hangover 2 don’t help the image, either.) Yet the reality is that Thailand, set amid Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia, is itself a bit of a giant in the important neighborhood of Southeast Asia. Its population is roughly a dozen times that of Singapore, the region’s star over-achiever, and well

14 | TOM PLATE

more than double that of Malaysia, which attracts notice as a modernizing moderate Muslim country. Internationally, its diplomacy has often stood out for being carefully crafted. It has managed not to annoy China while remaining in considerable favor with the United States, which relied on its help during the Cold War—and particularly during the difficult Vietnam War. Its formative leadership in ASEAN (the key regional alliance) often put Thailand at the head of the Southeast Asian political parade. Yet somehow Thailand gets little respect. There is one obvious reason: its domestic politics are very messy and sometimes embarrassing. Since 1932 its people have had to endure 18 military coups and watch countless prime ministers and governments fly in and out of the political revolving door as if no more important than sacked football-team managers. Basic core stability has always seemed to depend on the institution of the monarchy, backed by a well-fed military establishment, and headed by a king who for years has been the worlds longest-reigning monarch—and probably one of its most popular. Perhaps Thailand might have continued to slog along as it has—had it not been for the near-death experience of the Asian Financial Crisis. The epicenter of this historically severe regional downturn was in Thailand, starting in the summer of 1997, and before long the country came frighteningly close to bankruptcy. People lost fortunes, people lost jobs, the country lost all self-

Conversations with THAKSIN I 15

confidence and the government lost a lot of credibility. No one knew where to turn. Suddenly the so-called “Land of the Smiles” was turned on its head into a frown of national despair. How could this have happened? Given its considerable natural resources, a booming tourism industry and all sorts of attractions and advantages, the country began asking itself the question: something has got to be seriously wrong here for such a terrible economic earthquake to happen to us. And so into this atmosphere of intensifying uncertainty appeared a man named Thaksin . . . emerging out of this economic tragedy and national self-doubt as the cocky figure of supreme selfconfidence and phenomenal personal wealth. When most Thai companies had all but tanked and many former multimillionaires were close to broke, Thaksin rode out the financial crisis far better than almost anyone and was all but officially crowned the country’s best-known and most flamboyant multibillionaire. This

brilliant and

cunning—and

at

times ruthless—

businessman suddenly converted himself into a phenomenally effective politician. As if bored with being only a pioneering billionaire of the cell-phone revolution, Thaksin formed a new political party {Thai Rak Thai, or, sort of: Thais Love Thais) that on its first test in the election game only showed moderate success. Yet that wasn’t the end of it, and after its smashing triumph in the 2000 national election, TRT had enough seats in parliament to run the whole government. All of a sudden Thaksin, the money-mad money-maker, was its most popular politician.

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Thaksin’s electoral game was to play the populist card in vast rural swaths of the country that had been heretofore courted by virtually no one except the King of Thailand himself, who of course didn’t need their votes but felt morally compelled to honor the poorer folk with high-profile monarchal largesse and regular personal visits of considerable warmth. By contrast, Thaksin and his party envisioned in the otherwise ignored rural areas a gold mine of votes, where others in the well-off precincts of the Bangkok elite regarded such people as nothing more than a nuisance, better left to their caring King to attend to. TRT exploited the relentless logic of one man, one vote to extraordinary political success. Emulating U.S. and British electioneering and campaigning techniques, Thaksin and his TRT inner circle founded a political party that stitched together, almost scientifically, the first truly mass-party movement in Thai history. His grass-roots movement sought to evolve into an Americanstyle machine by which TRT rewarded with targeted government programs rural constituencies that had voted for its candidates, rather than systematically forgetting them once the votes were counted and the party’s candidates were packed away in comfortable office. This gave Thaksin and his followers an unusual measure of credibility that was to materialize yet again in the astonishing election results of this past July 2011. But before that came to pass, the radical modernization of Thai politics had a severe down period: it triggered internal

Conversations with THAKSIN [ 17

convulsions that in time led to the ejection of Thaksin from the country, the dissolution of his party, the banning of its party members and government officials from politics for five years, and the return of coup-created government. Less than a year after his colossal re-election in 2005, Thaksin was shoved out of power by traditionalist forces inside Thailand. And this took place despite his teams considerable achievements: vigorous economic growth, promising economic development for lagging rural areas, long overdue modernization of some government machinery, and more inclusive guaranteed national health care. None of this was anything to sneeze at: Thaksin was clearly the Thai difference-maker at the turn of the century. In effect, the whole fabulous, ill-fated, psycho-dramatic wild Thaksin run as prime minister, from 2001 to 2006, was pivotal for Thailand—and for a keenly watching Southeast Asia. But politics is good-guys, bad-guys more in the movies than in reality. It’s truly a pastel world of moral and ethical gray. Thaksin was no saint. One respected political journalist, Andrew MacGregor Marshall, dismissed this remarkable political innovator as “deeply corrupt”. Before I started on this book, a university colleague of mine said to me ominously and pointedly: “You had better stay away from him. He’s the most corrupt PM in Thailand’s history. You’ll lose all credibility if you do a book on him.” Those are damning if controversial judgments, of course; but they are not unheard ones. To many critics, Thaksin is an unfit subject of respectful inquiry. In American terms he might

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be depicted as crude as a Donald Trump and as slippery as an insincere preacher—like the fictional Elmer Gantry. In a culture at least nominally Buddhist, after all, he racked up all that personal wealth, while scandalizing the average Joe Thai for sliding this way and that to nab special deals, avoid fair taxes and maximize absolute gain. One cannot help recalling the words of the Holy Bible where the admonishing Christ lays it on the bottom line: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” And, sure, Thaksin was a calculating populist by any reasonable definition of the political ploy. But he was also popularly elected, by huge margins, more than once ... and arguably four times. And so what we have here is a huge and interesting puzzle. Who —and what—is Thaksin, who at this writing sits in exile in the United Arab Emirates, biding his time, hankering to return home. This book tries to piece together the puzzle of Thaksin Shinawatra by telling this gripping story mainly through Thaksin’s own intimate recollection of events—his thoughts, memories, hopes, and current fears. Yes, it is mainly one version of what happened, and why it happened— but never before related in such detail, against the backdrop of a large and valuable nation trying to evolve both politically and economically in this globalized age. And so this is our third Giants of Asia that jumps anew into controversial contemporary history—trying hard to see if we can’t

Conversations with THAKSIN I 19

get a bit of perspective on it. "What to make of this Thaksin? Do we sympathize with him as a tragic victim of anti-democratic force rolling over him with all the brutality of which military tanks are capable? Or do we find him a prime suspect in the farce of democracy, in which we ordinary people deluded ourselves that we have elected a true representative of the people but have instead simply empowered a self-serving rake? Could this couped-out man, in exile in Dubai when we talked with him, be all that bad? Was there not another side to the Thaksin story? Maybe even a more important, more interesting side? There was only one way to find out. Do some journalism. Go see him. Then report back to you. Then you decide. Hows that for a deal?

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

One of the most penetrating books of political analysis

in recent years is The Origins of Political Order, by Francis Fukuyama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). He is the Oliver Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. And he is the author of the famous and controversial The End of History and the Last Man. Short excerpts from the 2011 book are offered intermittently to help frame the historic turmoil in which Thailand has found itself. They are followed by my own brief comments.

The Return of the Jedi GOING HOME: ALWAYS THE FIRST THING ON HIS MIND

The Emir of Emirates Hills ... things he cannot and wont comment on ... his ‘right of return ... no witch-hunts, please! ... the warrior Thai in him GOING home is a universal emotion. Going home ... just the sound of the term conveys emotion. Whoever you are. Wherever you are. Going Home is the famous title and theme of the most haunting movement in Antonin Dvoraks ‘New World Symphony. And — understandably—that feeling is constantly on the mind of a former prime minister of a major Asian country known, among other traits, for excessive coups, world-famous cuisine and a boisterous capital sin-city called Bangkok. He’s going back even if it kills him . . . and it just might. But for these conversations he is in Dubai, sweating it out. So we have to go to see him. I have booked myself into Traders Hotel, not far from gleaming and gargantuan Dubai International Airport. It is mid-morning of a nice early December 2010 Arabian day, and this is on the opposite end of sprawling Dubai town from suburban Emirates Hills, where Thaksin Shinawatra and his small exile entourage

22 | TOM PLATE

reside in a seven-bedroom villa fully equipped for the occasional visiting relative or two. Depending on traffic, and on the skill and daring of the driver, the cross-town drive can take less than a half hour. Outside the hotel I jump into the waiting black sedan, polished as if to a gleaming black Arabian night, as it aims southwestward on the Sheikh Zayed Road, named for the country’s Lee Kuan Yew-style founder who died in 2004. I discover quickly you might as well be on the torrid German autobahn. The United Arab Emirates may sit on top of the worlds largest stocks of oil and gas, but sometimes its citizen-drivers pedalto-the-metal their vehicles almost as if worried about running out of fuel before they get to their destination! They seem to slow down only for the gritty winds of the hot summer months that sometimes feature daunting dust clouds and sand-rain storms. But this is now in early December, a real nice time to visit. Gleaming skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa needle, the worlds tallest building, period, flash by like tornado-swept pine trees. Suddenly everything about this place makes sense. For a moment at least, forget about the deeply rooted venerable Bedouin Arabic traditions, because in many respects this fast-expanding city was clearly built for modern-day velocity. The emirs and their fellow travelers simply traded in the old model camels for new Ferraris and BMWs. As we rocket down the Zayed freeway, I start speculating about the reaction of Thaksin and Co. to the shock release of the first raft

Conversations with THAKSIN I 23

of WikiLeaks embassy cables about Thailand. They had just hit the world news media. It’s an amazing coincidence, but they actually surfaced this week when I am in Dubai for Thaksin. At my own university—Loyola Marymount, founded by Jesuits—they would term the timing providential. The WikiLeaks outted heretofore secret cables from top U.S. embassy officials in Bangkok sent on to higher U.S. officials at the State Department in Washington around the time of the coup in 2006. They mainly alleged intensive behind the scenes maneuvering against Thaksin as the democratically elected politician’s increasingly authoritarian style unnerved the highest figures in the land of the smiles. The diplomatic cables were never intended to become public documents, of course. But that is what WikiLeaks is all about. And before long their substance would appear in countless newspapers and magazines worldwide—though not in Thailand. There, strict laws (known as lese majeste) seek to maintain a proper respect for the vital Thai monarchy by making public negativity about the Crown a severely punishable offense. Over the decades, though, the observance of lese majeste literalness has waxed and waned. It is not always in your face: but at this writing LM observance seems (to me at least, a citizen of the U.S., not Thailand) relentless and unsparing. Thaksin and his people would be alert enough to have absorbed the Wiki contents by now. The only question would be whether Thaksin would want to risk lese majeste exposure by commenting

24 | TOM PLATE

publicly for this book. My guess was that he would be circumspect and proper.1 In his shoes, I would be, too. Besides, he would figure that by the time this book was complete and published, pretty much everyone in the world would know what the WikiLeaks said about Thailand, and what their implications were. Anything he might add might appear like unseemly piling on. The car, a black Jag, late-model, races to a halt, safely somehow, in front of a green warren of detached, semi-detached and adjoining villas that if they were not so elaborate and obviously expensive might be marketed simply as fancy townhouses. The feeling of abundance of green and of money is not unknown to parts of Beverly Hills, with which Emirates Hills was bannered in the initial stage of advertising and marketing. It was as if they wanted to project a kind of Western Asian or Eastern Arabian answer to BH, where I live— but, I can assure you, in the much less pricey part. J

I get out of the car, and Thaksin is standing there, looking at me, perhaps impatiently, waiting. I note that he is not particularly tall, with that oft-noted square face and a large smile that dominates everything on the face except the eyes. They are cold, black and

1 The intensity of Thaksin s correctness regarding lese majeste had only increased when I visited with him in Dubai in July 2011, just days after his sister Yinglucks smashing triumph in the July 3 national elections, and seven months after these exhaustive conversations in December 2010, In fact he said for the record, to me at Le Petite Maison restaurant in Dubai: “I cannot comment on the WikiLeaks But in another conversation with him, some observations were made that might well be worth presenting in a second edition of this book, in a different climate.

Conversations with THAKSIN I 25

wary .. . very much so. After all, we have never once met. But his overall body language is relaxed, and not cold at all. “Welcome to my home away from home,” he beams warmly, gesturing to two well-constructed and alert-looking male aides, and to a quiet but missing-utterly-nothing, elegantly diminutive woman who, I learn, basically runs the place. An energetic Thaksin suddenly seems like he’s almost ready to kiss babies and quickly ushers me out of the heat and into the cool of indoors. The living room in the seven-bedroom, two-stories-plusbasement villa is large and softly lit and decorated in top-of-the line furniture that seems almost calculated not to offend anyone. A member of his staff has the tea tray brought in and we quickly get seated. Thaksin settles his modest frame into a large easy chair, and I plop myself into the middle of a comfortable brown couch. In front of us is the coffee table with the tea tray and a little sugar-dish of odd-looking sweets. Maybe they are local Arabian. I don’t know. I’m too busy trying to set up my mini-video cameras and audio recorders that I carry in my jacket pockets like some dodgy street electronics salesman. But I am inept. And Thaksin— the modern master of mobile mass-communications technology— notices. Then, finally, they are all set to go. I pick up my head and notice: wow, everyone seemingly is in an excellent mood! It’s either my amazing style, or the contents of the WikiLeaks about Thailand. It’s a tough call, but I vote for the WikiLeaks. How about you?

26 | TOM PLATE

And so when I start our conversation about them, smiles break open on his face. It occurs to me later that the raft of WikiLeaks about Thailand makes him feel that somehow he is in fact getting closer to going home. At one point an efficient aide sweeps into the room, jokes “Wiki, wiki, wiki!” and just as quickly exits stage right. I start with WikiLeaks. They just came out. They are all over the world. They are about the coup. I’d have to be a brain-dead journalist not to start with them. But Thaksin, in his easy chair, but alert to what I am up to, doesn’t want to go there. He certainly doesn’t want to begin our conversations with the sound of silence, either. But he clearly doesn’t want to talk about them unless he absolutely has to. Probably he doesn’t want to expose himself to lese majeste prosecution. And probably he feels they speak for themselves. These are not un-sensible positions to take. So I turn to the ground rules for the book. Months ago he had agreed to a full week of conversations, without any right to review the manuscript. I now just want to emphasize the need for maximum candor and limited deception. Me saying: "So if something does slip out of you that’s unintentional, and you worry about it causing harm to loved ones or allies, please exercise the right of immediate recall, a right that I want you to have, so that you won’t feel so uptight. Okay?” “Yeah.” «T « 1 mean...

Conversations with THAKSIN I 27

Then his cell phone rings. “Just a minute,” he says to me. Thaksin walks out of the living room and. into the adjacent dining area. It’s easy to hear him talking; he is talking into one of his many ready-to-answer cell phones to an operative. I suppose the call is coming because of the WikiLeaks. But we can only hear this end: “Yes, Steve? Okay, okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. ... ” Then Thaksin starts talking a mile a minute—all in English. I get the sense that Steve (who remains unidentified but who works for Thaksin) is on the receiving end of —among other things—Thaksin’s consistent complaint that many of the street demonstrations against him and his allies, including the occupation and closing down of the international airport in 2008, were financed and organized by political-military elements opposed to his version of democracy. He doesn’t mention it in this phone conversation, but he is also of the view that the pro-Thaksin street rallies in April and May 2010 should never have ended so tragically. Indeed, evidence is mounting that the military crackdown itself deliberately caused deaths and injuries. In fact, the Thaksin camp takes the view that the 2010 deaths occurred because the military was ordered by higher-ups to fire on protestors and inflame the street psychology further so as to make the protests seem out of control, and thus pre-revolutionary. As self-serving as his views maybe, almost all the available facts suggest they are not wrong. Back on the cell phone to Steve: “ That is really, really important . . . yeah, you saw everything? Okay, good. Good. Yes, yes . .. [content

28 | TOM PLATE

removed] Uh huh. Okay. Okay, okay, good. Thank you. Okay, thank you, bye-bye? One problem with people thinking Thaksin is a hopeless liar is that, in important respects, his basic complaints over the years about what happened to him are now being verified through the leaks of official documents. Their release goes a long way to support the Thaksin camp’s contention, ever since 2006, that the 2006 coup was a dirty deed indeed. That doesn’t make him a saint. But it raises serious doubts about the accuracy and fairness of the relentlessly negative portrait painted of him by his enemies. Thaksin sits down and seems to want to shift the discussion as far away from WikiLeaks as possible: “But I would say that if I were to comment on this, I would say that, let’s forget the past. It’s time to reconcile, and if you want to protect the institution of the monarchy of Thailand, if that is your goal, democracy is a good vehicle and good tool to protect the monarchy, not dictatorship.” “You mean, like ... it has worked in Britain?” “Yes. The monarchy of Thailand will be long lasting and well protected under a democratic system. But not under a dictatorship. And its time we as Thais should come to a reconciliation.” Thaksin clearly feels history is tilting his way now. So I plunge on: "How would you rate your chances of going back to Thailand? Perhaps the odds are a little better today?” (This question is posed seven months before the dramatic victory of the Puea Thai Party in the July national election that catapulted his sister Yingluck into the job he once held.)

Conversations with THAKSIN I 29

He muses, now slightly happily: “Well, I think, you know, time is on my side. Because I have done nothing wrong. The longer the wait, the more likely that rhe truth will be revealed as being on my side; and for their side, they have done a lot of things just to justify something which is not true. So the longer they do this, the longer they go on like this, the more they get trapped. So what I have said is that I can wait, because in the end, there must be reconciliation, otherwise Thailand will not

be prosperous.

Thailand will not be a smiling country anymore.” He’s alluding to the well-known cliche about Thailand: the “Land of the Smiles”. In fact, compared to a number of Asian countries I won’t

Q Q Well, I think, you < know, time is on my side. Because I have done nothing wrong. The longer the wait, the more likely that the truth will be revealed as being on my side. Q Q

identify, the Thais are by far the more smiling people—and you have to love them for that. For example, if I have to fly coach (and I hate to fly coach) I’d rather be packed in with smiling Thais than anyone else. They have the innate talent to make the best out of the worst. Maybe there’s something in the ever-smiling Thai personality that allows them to tolerate all these military coups? In any event, whatever the good people of Thailand deserve or do not deserve, they sure don’t deserve tanks in the streets every other second you look. I try to pick up the conversation with this: “Speaking about the possibility of reconciliation, that’s all good and fine, but what

30 1 TOM PLATE

about all the growing evidence that the military deliberately shot civilians in Thailand?” It appears the army was ordered to fire on demonstrators. “Yeah.” “That’s bad stuff.” He shakes his head sadly: “You know, there were 11 events that happened that led to civilian deaths, and the Department of Special Investigations did a full and fair inquiry and concluded that almost all those who died, were dead because of the military ... and they were supporters of the PAD [Peoples Alliance for Democracy], not the [pro-Thaksin] Reds.”

...I can wait because in the end, there must be reconciliation, otherwise Thailand will not be prosperous. Thailand will not be a smiling country anymore. O Q

Does Thaksin imagine he could or even should return home as prime minister? That would not seem the fastest route to national reconciliation. “Now, talking about what you can do other than going back as prime minister, or if you do go back,

going back in some important capacity for the Crown.” Thaksin looks at the landscape this way: “You know, Thailand has never been as bad as in the last four years. In the four years before that, we were able to gradually improve ourselves in the human rights area and in democracy development. I feel terrible that Thailand has slipped so much. You know why it has gone bad so quickly? Because of the misunderstandings about me, they [PAD

Conversations with THAKSIN I 31

leaders, military leaders] were trying to get me too much, until they used all kinds of forces against me without any consultation, or even discussion with me. Its mostly due to a great misunderstanding . . . they allege that I am not loyal to the Thai monarchy. So they thought that they would make the monarchy so happy with them by getting me. [content here deleted] The media are prejudiced against me and my supporters, and my supporters feel that this is not fair, with the result that more and more supporters join us every day. But they still keep doing the same bad things against me without any principle.” He is on a roll now: “You know, it is like you have a world that says your side is always wrong and my side is always right, regardless. It’s impossible to operate any society this way.” Thaksin could almost be echoing a famous line in the nowclassic 1983 movie Return of the Jedi. It comes when the wise Obi-wan says to the young Luke: “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” He continues: “But over the past four-and-a-half years since I left, it has been just like this—because of one perceived problem: Thaksin is not loyal to the monarchy, which is not true. Which is not true! They make it up in their own imagination, and they move all their political reality in the direction of their own imagination, which is a bad imagination.” He almost rises again, but then locks himself back into the chair. He wants to be in control of his emotions. But it is not always easy.

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“So I think that the only thing we can do with this is to ask for reconciliation. They’re afraid of me, they don’t trust that I’m not out for revenge. But I’m not out for revenge.” But he has such a strong personality—like this outcry from him: “Even when I am not in Thailand they don’t want me to go back. Because they know they cannot compete direcdy. So it’s a question of the way I go back. My return must be in a gracious way. And so I have to wait for the right moment. It may be at the end of this year [2011] ... in December.” That’s when his elder daughter is to be married, in Bangkok. That month will also mark reverential celebrations for the 84th birthday (or the significant 7th Cycle) of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Me asking: “If —or when-—you go back, would you promise your people in the military, and in the PAD opposition and so on, amnesty? Forgiveness?” “Yes, right.” “No witch-hunt?” “No witch-hunt. I think forgiveness is the key. I mean it.” “And people can trust you on this?” “Yes.” “They’re not going to be arrested? Or worse.” “No.” “No investigation? The past is past?” “I want to forgive and make the whole country forgive each other. Because, if you don’t forgive, you cannot reconcile your country. You cannot be one nation anymore.”

Conversations with THAKSIN I 33

Me pushing: “But some people say it would be better for Thailand overall if Thaksin says, ‘I’m never going back.’ But you’ve never said that, because in fact, you want to go back.” “I definitely want to return.” “Right, right. So it’s clear in your mind that if you go back, it’ll be better for Thailand than if you don’t go back?” “Definitely. If I were to go back successfully, you know, the people who are fighting against me now will not be fighting. And if I go back, and if I do not take revenge, and if I forgive everyone, those who don’t like me will start to feel more at ease.” “But if you do go back, do you have to be prime minister? Could you go back as minister-mentor, like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore used to be for years?” I

“I don’t have to be anything.” “Could you go back as Sonia Gandhi? The power behind the throne of India?” He sighs, and looks out toward the window: “Some people may not be comfortable if I go back and have political power, directly or indirectly. But I can even propose that I can be in any position; I do not need to involve myself in politics. For example, if the monarchy were kind enough to appoint me as an advisor to the Crown Property, I can help Crown Property do better financially. So, if I were appointed to any position by the Palace, I cannot be involved in politics. That kind of appointment would have the effect of forcing me not. to get involved in politics.” “So you might accept a Palace appointment?”

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“Yes. But I don’t want to have a Privy Councilor position [in Thailand a very important posting]. I don’t want to be anything that is ambitious. I just want to prove that I don’t mind not being anything, but I want to prove that I am beneficial to my country and my people.” “But why?” “Because I really worry about the poor.” Hmmm . . . we’ll have to take a good long look at that. “And because I feel gratitude to my supporters. Most of them are poor. And I feel sorry for some businessmen who are suffering now because of the poor economy on the domestic side. I owe them. They are fighting for justice, fighting for me . . . fighting for democracy. I still have to put all my energies that I have left to work for them, to pay back my gratitude.” “But do you have that kind of energy left in you?” It almost seems as if he is saying he could be a PM again. “Yes, yes. I told my [former] wife that we have to keep ourselves strong, physically and mentally, because we don’t know how long the fighting will last. But I will never stop fighting. Even from my dying bed, I will still fight.” “You feel in your skin, don’t you, that history’s coming back to you?” He continues: “I’m confident that the situation really cannot go on like this any longer. Reconciliation is inevitable. And if reconciliation is inevitable, it means that I’m going back. When I go back, definitely, I should be appointed something to be beneficial

Conversations with THAKSIN I 35

for the country and the people.” “Perhaps, as you suggest, some Palace appointment that’s above politics?” “Yes.” “Like maybe some kind of special rural economic czar?” “Right!” He likes that one! “Maybe something so that I can help the poor.” “And so what you’re saying is that you would be happy—let me see if I got this right—you would be happier to go back to Thailand, even if not as prime minister, but something lesser, than to stay here in Dubai for another 10 years? It’s pleasant here, but part of your soul is in agony here.” “Right.” “It is in agony, right?” “Right, right. My body’s here in Dubai, my soul is there ... in Thailand.” Pursuing: “But, dumb question, supposing the atmosphere continues to change, and people do say, you know, we really do need national reconciliation. What if there was

W I’m confident that the situation really cannot go on like this any longer. Reconciliation is inevitable. And if reconciliation is inevitable, it means that I’m going back.

a Thai consensus to form some international commission of reconciliation in Thailand? Have Bill Clinton on it, have Mandela on it, have Aung San Suu Kyi on it, have the Pope on it, have—”

36 I TOM PLATE

“Tutu on it.” “Have Desmond Tutu on it, have—” “Carter. Jimmy Carter.” Me saying: “Yup, every saint, all the goody types, you know? And that they would go into Thailand, and they would say that under United Nations reconciliation, Thaksin will come back, army will stand down, the reconciliation will be a process, elections will be monitored, and so on, and there’d be assurances, there’d be no incrimination or secret police arrests in the middle of the night ... is that possible? Is that something that could be done that would be plausible in Thailand?” “Well, you know in Thailand, the government officials, the military . .. they . . . [don’t do] anything until they get a signal. Even during the effort recently to bail our arrested Red Shirt leaders out of jail, we talked to the judges, and we asked for leniencies ... to let them out, you know. This is not a political thing. By our Constitution the government is supposed to grant bail for every criminal because it’s their duty to grant bail, except in certain circumstances, and so we wanted to protect their rights, but the judges would not allow bail for the Red Shirts. And when we asked a judge why, the judge said, ‘There is no signal.’ And we said, ‘Are you the judge or not?’ The judge has been hired to judge, not to look for signals, right? But the judge says to us, ‘I got no signal.’ So it looks like everyone is just waiting for signals.” “Right.” “That is, a clear signal that reconciliation can happen quickly.”

Conversations with THAKSIN I 37

“Who can talk to the King and Queen of Thailand? The Pope? Allah? Buddha? Whom do they listen to?” “Well, His Majesty respects international opinion. So if it is world opinion that this is time for Thailand to reconcile, and there is consultation with His Majesty, and they give him some ideas, then His Majesty might come to think that okay, this is the solution. I do believe that that will be a solution.” “Alright, let me give yon another scenario. Supposing someone of respect—Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General— supposing he were to go to Bangkok and to talk to the King, and say, ‘There has been all this turmoil and bloodshed, this is not good for Thailand. Why can’t there be reconciliation?’ Would the King listen? Would the King receive him?” “I think that, given Ban’s position, the King will welcome him. That kind of high-level position is the right position to provide international leadership because His Majesty is very senior. He’s the most senior head of state.” "Right, and currently the world s longest running King, right?” “Yes. It’s the job of Ban to express his leadership publicly and have it honored. This is not a matter of internal intervention by the UN, it is not just an internal affair at all. This trouble affects the whole region, and really affects the future of democracy, and affects the status of human rights. It’s his duty to do so.” “Who, the King’s?” “No, Ban Ki-moon’s. His duty. He must do it. But I don’t know that he has the courage to do it. He is the right person, because he

38 | TOM PLATE

is the one who upholds international standards of human rights, raises questions about war crimes, supports the International Criminal Court. You know, eventually these issues [of political violence in Thailand] will go to the ICC, regardless, so the more things are prolonged. . “The worse it is for Thailand.” “Yes. But I am afraid that he doesn’t have the courage.” “Who, the King?” “No! Ban.” Thaksin thinks of himself as a fighter and expects others in his league to be like him. He favors reconciliation and I believe he is sincere. But in his DNA there has to be the warrior gene, and genetics is a powerful force. Just listen. .. Me saying: “Do you have any regrets?” “Yes,” he nods, as he will explain later in this book, “but the truth is I would do it all again. If I could do it all again tomorrow I would. They could kick me out again, and I’d fight back and I’d go back home. And if they do that again, I will fight it, and I will be back.” You will come to agree that he’s not one for giving up easily.

Conversations with THAKSIN

1 39

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The Passion of the Thaksin THAILAND CAN’T GET RICH IF THE POOR STAY POOR

Swami of the poor ... fox not hedgehog ... pushing opportunity capitalism ... no genetic deformity . . . moving the Thurow pyramid “ W H E N that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: ambition should be made of sterner stuff.” And so Marc Antony famously reminds the Roman crowd in Julius Caesar that the just-assassinated Caesar was not just an ambitious politician but a committed one; and that something else had been stirring in that populist soul beneath the surface of his authoritarianism. And so we remember that Thaksin has claimed for himself and his mass political party a special covenant with the poor: stay with us and we will raise you up. We will not just take your vote and forget all about you. In large part this covenant is why he feels his politics of sustainable social programs for the mass poor must be returned to Thailand. It is not just a matter of his enormous Thaksin ego. No, he will make the large claim in our conversations that it is a matter of politics helping millions of poor all but ignored by a political system desensitized to shame. And this has been happening decade

Conversations with THAKSIN I 41

after decade in a country weighed down—and held back—with one of the world’s largest rich-poor divides. Wow—that sure will seem good and noble, wont it? But isn’t it the case that this terribly rich man worries about the poor mainly out of pure guilt? Or does nor this man possess some more deep-seated, perhaps even genuine, feeling? Born into a measure of comfort, though not remotely into genuine wealth, and rising during middle age to billionaire status— and today living in modest luxury even in exile—Thaksin would seem to be the least likely swami in all of the kingdom of Thailand to beguile the country’s many poor. But he had an extraordinary knack for concocting and, to some extent, implementing social and economic programs for the poor that not only helped them but which they could also readily understand and appreciate. His health care and economic development policies not only were vote-getters but also attention-getters. They became his trademark political philosophy. Elevate the status of the poor and everyone wins, was his song-and-dance. In Thailand, with its huge rich-poor divide, such overtures were never off-pitch, except, evidently, to the nation’s threatened elite. Their view was that the poor’s gain might become their loss, and they didn’t like losing what they had ... especially to them. Until Thaksin’s dramatic political arrival; what’s more, caring about the poor had been the monopoly of the King of Thailand.

42 1 TOM PLATE

It was almost a kind of Buddhist priesthood: the efforts from the Palace over the decades to show concern for the poor became a hallowed Thai tradition. The efforts did not alleviate poverty but they did ease some of the suffering and cement an emotional bond between the King and his people. It was almost as if the political culture of the country delegated to the monarchy the task of making the poor seem special, even as the poor knew they were stuck in poverty, their eternal place in the grand scheme of things. Thaksin’s approach was radically different. Instead of visiting the poorer areas with the gesture of (in effect) passing out loaves and fishes to sate hunger temporarily and show royal caring, his policies proposed to train poorer Thais to start up their own bread-making and fish-packaging businesses to develop sustainable enterprises—in a manner of speaking. These efforts wouldn’t make them rich overnight, but they might open the door that lets them flee a lifetime of no-exit poverty. He went to them as a politician who’d deliver on this promise, rather than as a secular deity politely commiserating with them on their existence with his mere presence. The Thaksin ambition was somewhat revolutionary because the appeal was so direct. In the past politicians would approach the poor as if dogs whose loyalty could be bought, for a brief time at least, by throwing them bones. The Thaksin approach emphasized programs that might stick, improve the rural economy and thus cement the loyalty to his party for the foreseeable future.

Conversations with THAKSIN I 43

If the effort wasn’t wholly successful—he had less than six years before being couped-out—it seemed credible and meritorious to many Thais in vast areas outside of Bangkok But the very effort had one—and probably only one— political downside; and it was major. It may have cast this secular politician, in the mind of some higher-ups in the Palace at least, as a competitor for the affections of the country’s poor. It was as if the secular billionaire was muscling in on the King’s turf. For make no mistake about it: no one in the Bangkok elite was worrying too much about the status of the poor. For decades that saintly mission was the monarchy’s, for which continuing effort the poor folk of Thailand had little ocher choice but co be deeply grateful. And so back at the house for another session. We need to understand why Thaksin thought he could get away with trying to become the secular king of the poor in a constitutional monarchy which for decades had kept that job for itself. I CLEAR my throat of morning un-readiness: “This is a long question, so you can have some tea. We used to do this at the Los Angeles Times, when we had guests over for lunch or dinner, we would suggest, ‘We’ll ask a long question, so you can get a chance to eat, so you don’t have to talk all the time.’ ” He seemed okay with that. I also knew that he wasn’t about to have a huge problem with this first question—on the different

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“Our Giants of Asia books used, as an easy framing device, the notion of Isaiah Berlin in his famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox. There the great historian and thinker proposed to categorize leaders as being great men for one of two reasons: either because he or she has one huge idea, like Albert Einstein ... he couldn’t do lots of ordinary things like us mere mortals, but he had one big breakthrough idea (Relativity Theory) that more or less changed the worlds view on relativity. That was the definition of the hedgehog, the one big idea guy. What’s the big idea? ‘I survive and flourish only because of my scary protruding needles.’ Nothing else needed be said, basically, about the hedgehog. He was about one thing.” He nods. This is familiar to him. He had read it in Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, his sister Yingluck said. “By contrast, Sir Isaiah put forth as the other iconic category the fox, which survives for a thousand different reasons ... all sorts of little smart and quick things the fox has to know and do in order to survive. Sense of smell, quickness, street smarts...” I pause and then ask: “So what is Thaksin: fox or hedgehog?” He only takes a few seconds for this one: “Probably more fox.” That seems fair but he volunteers that greatness in any individual is problematic because no one person’ brings everything you need to the table and every human has deficiencies. I go on anyhow: “Now, I think you’re probably right, probably of the two you are more the fox. But as I understand your view, you believe that poverty can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated. Now that’s quite a big idea. You really do believe that?”

Conversations with THAKSIN I 45

He nods. I wish I did, but no matter. In fact it is a huge idea. Instead of ‘trickle down economics’, it is ‘trickle up’. Improve the lot of the poorest among you, and all will benefit, even the rich. “You know, my grandpa used to say, ‘The poor will always be with us.’ But you’re an optimist on that. Why?” Thaksin saying: “You know, whether you are born in New York or in Sierra Leone, people are almost the same. Their prospects depend on how they have been brought up, and the surroundings they’re in. Consider the poor person who has been born in the rural countryside. Their parents are poor. But it’s not necessary that their children should be poor in the next generation. If they have been brought up better than their parents, or if their parents can do better in bringing them up than their grandparents, they will be better off. So much is an outcome of good nutrition, good education, and good opportunities.” “It takes money, though.” He nods: “Yes. Takes money, but they don’t need a lot of money. You don’t need to give each family one million dollars so they will be rich. No. And we don’t want them to be rich easily. But we want them to be able to breathe and flourish, but instead [in Thailand] they are drowning. If we can just get to them before they drown, take their head up so they can breathe, then they will find a way to get to the shore. Suddenly they will have energy, and so they will try to use their own energy. They don’t want to drown anymore, because they know that being drowned is an

46 | TOM PLATE

experience of torture. So after they can breathe, they will never want to drown again.” This breathless outburst reveals Thaksin’s self-confidence at its most basic. He shifts in his armchair in the living room and continues: “By helping them, its not that you are just giving everything to them. It’s like they are sick persons. They are not strong, but even so, life asks them to carry a

By helping them [the poor], it’s not that you are just giving everything to them. It’s like they are sick persons. They are not strong, but even so, life asks them to carry a lot of weight.

lot of weight. But at the same time the government is bigger. It can carry some weight for them for a while, and after they are strong, you put their true weight back on them.” This here is the essential Thaksin thinking about the

poor: incremental efforts will go a long way. The government, for example, should provide computer tablets for every child that cannot afford one. “For example, I did debt suspension, not debt forgiveness, but suspension for the small former. If you borrow from the government less than US$10,000, we suspend your debt for three years, and in that three years, you don’t have that burden. This gives you time to create new income, and prosper a little bit. Three years later you’re supposed to be able to pay it back, to pay back the loan, but over those three years you pay no interest. The government pays the

Conversations with THAKSIN I 47

interest to the lending bank, a government bank.” “Right. A loan. Interest-free loan for three years.” “And I negotiated with the government bank so that the government pays the interest. This means the poor person gets 100 percent of the money.” “And the banks know they’re going to get their money back.” I want to hear him rattle off some details so that we know it’s not all rhetoric. “Yeah. So the banks have to reduce the interest rate. Give us a special rate, and then I, the prime minister, will pay them back on behalf of the small farmers. So they are happy, because now they don’t have to pay the loan shark. You don’t need a lot of money for them to get out of poverty. But when opportunities arise you have to help them.” He makes it sound so easy, no? Maybe too easy? He senses this skepticism: “Just look at our average farmer. They have to eat three meals a day, yet they harvest only once or twice a year, so how can they survive? You have to give them opportunity to have additional income beyond what they normally do.” “Right. But what I hear you saying, is that your theory of rural poverty development ... it’s not redistributionist.” “No. It’s opportunity capitalism. The concept is that they are sick persons. They are not strong. They cannot carry a lot of weight. That’s what I think. So you have to take the weight off for a while until they’re strong, and put the weight back only when they are ready to carry it. That’s my idea. And the second idea, I tell them,

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is you’re poor because your income is less than your expenses. This •is all that poor is.” “Right.” I think we all sort of knew that, but he actually is seeking to make a point he does deem profound: he is saying being poor is entirely a mathematical proposition and not a genetic deformity. “So you have to try to reduce their expenses and try to increase their income until its square, or income is higher.” “So reduce their health expenses.” The Thaksin government had implemented low-cost health care for the poor that was truly innovative for Thailand. It was also truly controversial within the health-care profession, which saw quality going down the drain as the government sought to finance health care on a severe discount. But all that the poor knew was that suddenly they could see a doctor for about a dollar, instead of for an arm and a leg. Thaksin continuing: “Exacdy. So I taught them how to do simple accounting, family accounting. You have all kinds of expenses, so you write them down. You write all income, and then you add it up, you see your expenses are high.” “They never did that before?” Seems unbelievable. Seems so obvious. “Never.” “You mean, you used to go out to the countryside and talk about this?” “Yes.”

Conversations with THAKSIN I 49

“Did they like it?” “They liked it very much. For example ... oh, the husband buys liquor, the wife goes to the beauty salon. This is unnecessary. Anything unnecessary, you take it off the list until the balance is close. If it is still not close, if still not equal, you have to have additional income. For example, you are good in cooking, why don’t you sell food at the market? Abu don’t have money to start that up? Then we provide funds for you to borrow through the Village Fund that our government has created. That is a very little thing but it made them happy, because for the first time their income exceeded their expenses.” And this means: they are not poor by Intelligent (or even ‘mean’) Design. Change the numbers, change the equation, and leave being poor in the dust. It’s time for a litde attempted humor on my part: “I’m a little worried, though. With your formula, you’re going to have sober husbands looking at ugly wives.” He does laugh. He has a laugh that fully occupies his face. It is not a diplomatic smirk or a half-baked smile— he is not afraid to laugh. Maybe what he needed when he was prime minister was not so much hotshots from Princeton or Oxford but one or two of Thailand’s best comediennes to keep him laughing—to keep the atmosphere lighter and to keep him grounded. He continues: “You know, sometimes they do too much gambling. They do it because they have no other hope. How can we get rich? So we had better gamble. But if they see the light at

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the end of the tunnel ... oh we can have income through working harder, because the government gives us opportunities, so that is what we can do— they can adjust themselves. With the family accounting, they can see the problem easily.” Me saying: “Your idea is basically micro-economic development in the countryside, but I—Tom Plate, a make-believe Thai, living in a fancy section of Bangkok—believe you want to take my money and give it to them. Right? That’s the redistributionist way. That’s the socialist way, right?” He- shakes his head: “I’m not taking your money to give it to them. I don’t give anything to them. I let them work so they pay tax. They have almost never paid tax, but once they have the ability to consume, they pay the consumption tax. So during my administration, the tax intake from the rural sector was higher than the urban. To facilitate borrowing from the state banks, for example, the debt-suspension program, we used some taxpayer money but not much.” “Did you come up with this policy idea on your own? Some of these programs hardly sound like core curriculum at the police academy where you got your advanced degrees! Did you have consultants come in from the outside?” He is sitting on the brown sofa this time and looking out the window, as if talking to the glass pane: “Some ideas we brainstormed in the party. And some come from my own family experience. For example, I said that poverty is like a company that’s losing money; the family of the poor is like a company that’s losing money. We use

Conversations with THAKSIN I 51

the concept of company turnaround; turnaround is just reducing expenses and trying to find a new source of income.” This of course is the Chief Executive Office model of governance, and Thaksin is the CEO of Thailand (as it were) charged with making sure all the company’s ‘units’ stay profitable, including all the ones in the countryside. “Right.” But for poor people this is far harder to achieve than to comprehend. “That’s all we do. The exact same thing but we adapt it to the rural poor. And while PM, I announced that at the end of 2009 no one who doesn’t want to be poor would be poor. Nope. Anyone not wanting to be poor will not be poor by the end of 2009. That I announced. But then, in 2006, I was ousted. This was after I predicted and planned that we should be able to eradicate poverty from Thailand within four years.” “You left after almost six of your 10 years. If you had stayed, do you really think you would’ve gotten a lot of it done by the time you left?” I don’t, of course, but is my cynicism as a journalist getting the better of my ideals? Of course,, just months before the coup, he had told the Palace that he would step down. He had to, he felt; but in his heart he would have liked to have stayed on

for the full second term,

of course.

While PM, I announced that at the end of 2009 no one who doesn’t want to be poor would be poor. ...But then, in 2006, 1 was ousted.

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He turns back and. stares directly at me, almost defiantly: “Right. That’s why they didn’t want me to stay. I could try to eradicate poverty in four years on my second term, easily, and I planned even more land reform. My approach was that you can have as much land as you can handle— but you have to produce. If your land does not produce anything, we’ll buy it from you. If you insist on keeping it, ok, then the taxes will be higher every year until you do something productive with it. And eventually we will take that land and give it to the real hard-working farmers so that they can do farming. Those who want to do farming but are without land will get the land. But land reform really annoys people.” "Who?” “it annoys the old establishment.” “Could it be said that this issue is the number one irritating thing—land reform?” “That is one of them, yes.” He swoops down to the table for the cup of tea that the staff have put out. Me continuing: “To Thailand’s south, in Malaysia, former PM Mahathir wrote a famous book in 1970 called The Malay Dilemma, and in that book he claims that the problem with the Malays is that they’re not ambitious. He says they don’t really want to work hard. They enjoy life too much, and Malaysia cannot get its country developed properly that way.” He nods, sipping tea: “It’s the same with the Muslims in Thailand’s south. They go only to religious schools. They don’t want to go to normal schools. And, secondly, often the husband is

Conversations with THAKSIN I 55

very lazy. They want to stay all day in tea-houses, drinking tea, and then playing with the cuckoo bird, the one that can sing. It is the lady of the house who goes to work the rubber trees.” “Women do the work?” “Many men have no ambition. Maybe that’s because they have no knowledge or maybe because they have no jobs there. I don’t know. But that’s the reason why I want to create jobs. The name of the game is, create jobs.” “By contrast you think the Thais are industrious?” “We are, but we don’t have enough entrepreneurs. That was one of my projects ... to create new entrepreneurs by promoting them, with our SME [small and mid-sized enterprise] Bank, special loans, with special terms. Because if you don’t have a strong enough entrepreneurial middle-class people, who will create the jobs? This is the case in some countries in Africa. They don’t have a large enough entrepreneurial class.” “Well, that’s probably the best thing about America’s economic culture, right? And what does it take to create an entrepreneurial culture? Education or what?” “Actually, Asians often have the entrepreneurial spirit but their social values are changing. The Chinese Thai—or the Thai Chinese—they work hard from nothing. They will do all kinds of work to make money, but at the same time, when they have children . . . they love their children so much, and so they send them abroad to have a good education. But instead of coming back to be entrepreneurs like their fathers, they become the professional

54 | TOM PLATE

people ... salary men, doctors, lawyers. Being a professional is different from being an entrepreneur.” A country at a high level of development may find economic growth slowing as more and more talented people choose professions that may improve life quality but do not advance productivity. The entrepreneurial class can directly increase a nation’s productivity in ways professionals essentially involved in service provision, by definition, cannot. He continues: “And they don’t want to come to work and get dirty hands and such things like their fathers anymore. They can drive the car their fathers bought for them. They become the professional employee under the multinational corporation instead. So less and less, we Asians don’t breed new entrepreneurs. But we have other kinds of entrepreneurs ... that is, the poor that do the street vending.” He catches his breath, takes another sip of green tea: “But the need is to create the middle-size enterprise out of the smallsize entrepreneur. That’s why we have to give them the financial incentives and the training to set up entrepreneurial ventures. One small company can create a minimum of five jobs, you know. We need that.” Thaksin reverts to his feelings about the poor: “Right, and also those who are very well-to-do already, they have the tendency to protect their status quo. They don’t want to change. And regarding the people in the urban areas—the old establishment—they don’t understand the poor.”

Conversations with THAKSIN 1 55

“How do you understand the poor?” He presses forward: “Their attitude of looking at the poor is this: you are poor because you are lazy; you are poor because you don’t have education; you don’t go to school, etcetera. But that is the end-result of being poor—not because they want to be poor. But sometimes they don’t understand that. “Because I grew up in the rural countryside, I know. I used to talk to them [the poor] when I was a young boy. My father hired the garden workers, and they came, they worked, they dug the soil, and then at lunch time they cooked their own meal, and then they did the work. I watched the way they ate. They didn’t go to market—they would catch the frog in the fields and cook it. They didn’t have anything; they just had rice. How can they live? “I understand. I saw this. When I came to power, because I climbed up via my business success, I know that, okay, we should do something, we should help them. If we were to compare the whole organization of society to a human body, then when parts of it are dying, how can the whole body be strong? We have to re-invigorate each sector . . . that is, try to help the people from the countryside. “Like Lester Thurow, the Nobel Prize laureate in economics, said, ‘Don’t try to move the pyramid from the top. The pyramid has to move from the bottom.’ We share the same idea, that we have to solve the problem, but the attitude of the elite, of the rich people . . . they don’t understand. They don’t understand. A capitalist economy means that you have to have capital to prosper. The rural sector doesn’t have capital.”

56 | TOM PLATE

Now comes Thaksin’s harsh indictment of the banking system: “The banks take in the savings from the people, but the [outflow] loans go only to the urban sector. So in the countryside they have no capital to prosper. When there is no capital, the talent leaves. With the talent gone, you have left behind the old people and the children at the farms. The working-class people have moved to the cities to find jobs. You don’t allow them to keep their talents there. You move the talents from the rural to the more prosperous urban sectors.” “Right.” “That is, every developing country is the same. So what I think we should do is just use the capitalism-economy concept: capital, capital, capital. In my government we brought capital back. So when capital gets there, jobs are created, and some of the talent will go back. Everybody, by nature, wants to be in their homeland, with their families and peers. So I think it’s time to understand the poor, that they just don’t want to be poor.” “But that requires a massive amount of money?” “Not really. For example, you know, I set up micro-financing for them, but instead I did it like each of these families in the rural areas were little businesses. Then my government gave each village US$30,000 to manage as a community. This is your money. You manage it. You improve the community that you select, you approve the loan, set up the interest rate, and collect [when the little loan comes due]. You know, three years into this program, only 2.6 percent didn’t pay back the loan.” Some figure

Conversations with THAKSIN I 57

close to this has been confirmed by studies. “And that drove the economy?” “Yes.” The neglected poor accounted for so many votes in the Thai electorate that appealing to them was smart politics if nothing else. Me saying: “I think your story is interesting for two reasons: one is, the issues are interesting, which is the idea of one man, one vote, and democracy, on the one hand, versus elitist government— the more elitist approach of the better educated, the ‘finer folk’, the better people running the country, and that’s a deep philosophical issue, and it played out in Thailand almost like a laboratory political-science exercise.” Thaksin saying: “You have to strengthen Thailand’s grassroots sectors. You have to help the rural areas to prosper. If you lift something, one sector up, the together, not just one part of the economy; but you

V < You have to help the rural areas to prosper. If you lift something, one sector up, the other will go up together, not just one part of the economy. CpC)

have to lift from the bottom. If you lift the bottom up, the top goes up as well. This approach does not mean that you neglect the cities but if the rural economy is better, then everything, even the tourism, will improve even more. Even more.” “So if you don’t have significant economic development in the rural areas, Thailand will never appreciably improve.” He thinks this over, then says carefully: “Well, it will grow

58 1 TOM PLATE

much more slowly. It will take generations. Education is very important, not just only providing education but providing a quality of education. Our quality of education is not that good because teachers are low-pay workers. High respect, low pay. Because of their status as a teacher, you get plenty of respect but you are getting low pay. Sometimes you have to borrow money just to keep your position and status. You have to improve the quality of the teachers, not to mention the curriculums and the infrastructure.” “Right.” As a university or college professor since 1992—and most of those years at public institutions—I saw the transformative power of education first hand. Money well spent on education at all levels will always yield multiple dividends. But Thaksin believes Thailand lags critically behind: “Even in our universities, now, we do less pure research than many countries.” “I know you feel strongly about that.” “Yes.” “Did you learn that because of your travels as PM, or when you went to graduate school at American universities?” “In America, I attended so many exhibitions and conferences. I know we are behind in research. We are strong in a few areas but not many. In agriculture, we are good but other than that, we are very, very lagging in science, terrible in science—” “And technology.” “Yeah, and technology, we are very weak. So we need a lot more investment on research, and on how to improve learning. I think

Conversations with THAKSIN I 59

Dr. Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert of the One Laptop Per Child program at MIT are right. I’m one of the very few who agree with them. In places like China, Brazil and Thailand, we should all agree co do One Laptop Per Child.” “When you were PM you were part of the program?” “Yes.” “Now Thailand isn’t?” “.No.” “Yeah, this is a big thing. The MIT group thinks this will create revolutionary change. You agree, right?” “I agree with them, and I would have asked the telecom operators to invest in WiMAX in the rural areas; to give it to them free of charge because they will eventually make a profit as their economy grows.” The cost estimate of the MIT tablet comes in at about US$100 per child. But crack Indian researchers and engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Sciences have developed a US$35 solar-powered, touch-screen ‘Sakshat’, which in Sanskrit means personification. Thaksin likes the Indian model for obvious reasons. Thaksin came from neither a particularly rich nor poor rural family. But he learned much about advancement while at a young age. As he puts it: “I am a self-made billionaire but I grew up in a rural area where I was fully experienced in the reality of poor lives. Since then many decades have passed and yet they still live the same. I want to help them.”

60 | TOM PLATE 4

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Motorcycle Dad ... missing his rural history ... the instrumental approach ... beaming from what Clinton said ... one person, one vote, for sure WE keep going. How did this rich man become so interested in the poor man? Is it all just politics? I say: “My Sherlock Holmes talent suggests that I know where you got your entrepreneurial genes from!” “Yes. [laughs] I learned from my father since I was three years old. Actually, my father influenced me in terms of work and business and politics but my mother influenced me about life in general. She did not have a good education, but she was always home, and close to the children; she taught me about life.” “You know, when I was doing the Giants of Asia book about Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad, at one point I started to ask him about his mother and his father and his family, and you could see, his face went like, mmm, he didn’t want to talk about it, but once he did it was fascinating, and so I want to make sure I cover this topic with you. It’s related to women, but when you were young, who was the most influential on you . . . your father, or your mother?”

62 I TOM PLATE

Thaksin sighs too. I guess when you’re in your sixties and a former head of government and perhaps soon again a billionaire you might figure you’re beyond this by now! “My father would always go out. Sometimes I followed him here and there, so I learned his habits and how to work. He’s really a kind of hands-on person, and I became like just him —hands-on everything.” “That’s what we were talking about yesterday—hands-on management. What did your father do professionally?” “When I was young, he did the farming. He would grow everything in the 10 acres of land that he had. Everything . .. oranges, he grew bananas, he grew dates, corn, vegetables ... everything. And he dug the pond to have a fishpond. He did so many things, and he was really diligent. And for his time he was very modern.” “Is that right? Farming technology?” “Yes, at that time, he used tractors. In that area, in that era, no one had a tractor like that.” “He had a gas-engine tractor? How did he ger the money for that?” “Oh, well, you know, it’s not expensive at that time but unlike others he dared to invest. He dared to invest. When we opened a coffeehouse, a small shop house really and he’d do coffee, we were the first one in that district to have refrigerators.” «T » 1 see. “Refrigerators that were using what we called benzene, and my

Conversations with THAKSIN I 63

mother would use that refrigerator to sell new things like . . . like banana. We fridged it, and we sold fridge banana! [He laughs] We sold a lot of things using that fridge.” Well, there you go: the. entrepreneurialism is indeed in the genes. Moving on. . . “In every family, there tends to be either the mother or the father who is the disciplinarian, and the other one is the pushover. In my family I was the pushover and my wife the disciplinarian. How about in yours?” “We are very disciplined—the whole family.” “Well then, whom did you lose first, your mother or your father, or are they both alive today?” “No, no. They both passed away. Mother died first when she was only 62. And at that time, I was still struggling as a businessman.” And his sister Yingluck was finishing out her teen years. “Uh huh, uh huh, and then did your father—?” “My father died long after that, when I was deputy prime minister [in the 90s].” “In the Giants of Asia Lee Kuan Yew book, Lee talks about his dad being very strict, and he took his dads after-shave lotion, or something like that, and Dad held him over the well in the backyard, upside-down, and you know, in a very kind of cruel way; of course, people speculate that maybe that helps account for his apparent coldness and disciplined hardness. After all, his latest book was not for nothing titled HARD TRUTHS."

64 |

TOM PLATE

Thaksin laughs: “I was never hit by my father. No. My mother, yes, but my father, never.” “She would hit you sometimes?” “Sometimes, but not much. My father, never.” “Never. But did your father have an instructional voice? I mean, was your father like, if he said, ‘No’, it was no?” “He was very, very firm. He says no. . “Forget about it, right?” “Forget about it.” “And how many brothers and sisters did you have?” “Nine.” “Nine? Now, would you say you were born in poverty, or perhaps middle class?” “I think lower middle.” “I see.” But the Shinawatras could afford to bring in gardeners. Then again, labor was cheap in the countryside. Ok, then—upper lower middle’ “Is your extended family basically all back in Bangkok?” “In Bangkok.” “Do you miss them?” “Yes.” “So would you say that the way that your mother and your father treated you . . . your mother was a little strict, and while both parents were disciplinarians, mother would whack you once in a while, but nothing like what Lee Kuan Yew used to get.” He nods.

Conversations with THAKSIN I 65

Me continuing: “I was raised in lower-middle-class to middleclass neighborhoods on Long Island, which is a suburb of New York, and my constant dream was to escape Long Island. I did, around the age of 19, and I never looked back, never wanted to go back to Long Island. Do you feel that way? Was there a time when you felt you had graduated from the rural part of Thailand and now you’re an urban person, and so moving forward, you’re never going to go back to the rural?” “No. I often miss my history. I always like to go to my hometown. But once I moved everything to Bangkok, when I went back, it was just for a visit, not really to stay for long.” “Right. But I never wanted to go back at all.” “Well, you may not have had a good experience.” “I didn’t. And I always felt that if I went back, I’d be sucked back—and down.” “Oh.” “You see what I mean? So, that’s why—one reason—here I am sitting with you in Dubai, talking to the former prime minister of Thailand, and I’m as far away from Long Island as I can get, right? But you didn’t feel that way, and you have some very good memories of those times. I’m just wondering, maybe, does that experience at all—I’m being a silly amateur psychoanalyst here— has that experience at all maybe added to your pathos to the poor . . . f o r your country’s rural people?” “Maybe, because I still have fond memories of living in a rural area, and I remember that when I went to school, I rode on the

66 I TOM PLATE

back of the motorcycle of my father and watched the rice fields along the way—I can still remember that scene. So I have a very fond memory, and maybe that’s one reason I do feel sympathy for the rural people when they are so poor and they have so little chances. How can we give them opportunities, give them some hopes? That is my passion.” “This is serious? You are serious here?” “Yes. My passion is not to be prime minister. My passion is to solve the problems of the people. Being prime minister was simply the vehicle by which I could try to do it.”

W My passion is not to be prime minister. My passion is to solve the problems of the people. Being prime minister was simply the vehicle by which I could

“Well, that’s what interests me, because if you take a cynical view of Thaksin, you can say, ‘Sure, he was in favor of helping the rural poor, because that’s where the votes were,’ and until Thaksin, there was no particular reason for them to fancy any of the candidates. So country voters just vote for whoever paid them, right? But then, you come

along, and all of a sudden you’re promising to change their lives, and end poverty, and so on. But then cynics still insist: but he doesn’t really care about them, he just knows that’s where the votes are, and that’s how his party came to be the dominant party of Thailand, and what you’re telling me is you have a passion for these people, right? And I’m trying to understand why.”

Conversations with THAKSIN i 67

Here again, he sticks to reasoning by logic and fact. He does not choose to invoke an ethical principle. He is interested in what philosophers would call the instrumental perspective—what can be done in a relatively short period of time. This is both his strength and his weakness. He answers: “It’s a different way of thinking, but people still insist, ‘Oh, Thaksin, you are rich. You lure in the poor because the poor are easy to buy.’ They will never understand my angle of looking at the poor. I tell them, ‘Hey, please understand me. I’m not buying votes.’ But they are not going to understand. They think because you are rich, you must be a vote-buyer. But they don’t take the time to consider why and how I became rich. I’m not stupid rich. I do my own thinking, and I do not come to politics to burn my mon ey without achieving anything.” He sighs: “You know, in 2005, when President Clinton met me in 11

Phuket, not long after the terrible Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 ...

he came with President Bush, the father...” “Right. The Good Bush.”

Q Q I’m not stupid rich. I do my own thinking, and I do not come to politics to burn my money without achieving anything.

“Yeah, [laughs] This was right after I won the big landslide for my second term. And you know what Clinton said? He said, ‘Thaksin...’ he had met me before, so he knew me, ‘Thaksin, you know why you won that landslide? Because the people, they know that you care about them.’ Those were the words of President

68 | TOM PLATE

Clinton—‘because the people know that you care about them.’ He said they know I really work for them.” “Yeah. You feel their pain. But say that you’re an elite in a certain kind of Bangkok circle, and you take the contrasting view that in fact ‘they are poor because they have poor character,’ right? ‘And they’ll never not be poor, no matter how many programs you have, or whatever you give them,’ right? One advantage of having that attitude or philosophy, is that, then, you don’t have to feel guilty about your wealth, because then you can say, ‘No matter what I do for them — I can give them half my wealth— but it won’t make any difference, so I might as well just enjoy my wealth, because the poor only know how to be poor.’ ” Yet again, he goes toward the practical point — how to do it; not why it should be done. “You know, I once got a very good idea from a very smart Indian guy, and he said that if one is rich, if you divided your wealth among all the poor, it wouldn’t work. He said, ‘After I give all of my wealth to the poor, I will do little but create one more poor person— that is me.’ You cannot solve poverty that way. Our wealth is not enough to erase the poverty of the whole country. It is our talent that can help reduce poverty, not our wealth but our talent,” Nice point, no? “Right, but there is in America, of course, now, the whole revisionist thinking about wealth, and part of it is that you should give back, you know, as much as possible, say to a foundation, or

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