Thaksin Shinawatra (help·info) (Thai: ทักษิณ ชินวัตร, IPA: [tʰáksǐn tɕʰinnawát]; Chinese: 丘達新; pinyin: Qiū Dáxīn, nicknamed Maew แม้ว by the media) (born July 26, 1949) is a Thai businessman who was Prime Minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006, when he was deposed in a military coup and convicted in absentia for a conflict of interest. He was born in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand and started his career in the police. He later became a successful telecom entrepreneur and one of the richest people in Thailand.
He entered politics in 1994 and founded the populist Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party in 1998. After a landslide election victory in 2001, he became prime minister, the country’s first to serve a full term.[4] Thaksin introduced a range of partly effective and highly popular policies to alleviate rural poverty.[5][6] He launched the country's first universal healthcare program,[7] the 30-baht scheme, as well as drastic social order and drug suppression campaigns.[8]
His re-election in 2005 had the highest voter turnout in Thai history. [9][10][11] His main support base is in the north and northeast of Thailand.
The Shinawatra government also faced allegations of corruption, authoritarianism, treason, conflicts of interest, acting non-diplomatically, and muzzling of the press.[12] Thaksin was accused of tax evasion, lèse majesté and selling national assets to international investors. [13][14] Independent bodies, including Amnesty International, criticized Thaksin's human rights record.
Massive protests occurred in 2006, and on 19 September 2006 a military junta overthrew Thaksin's government in a bloodless coup while he was abroad. The CNS-appointed constitutional tribunal dissolved the Thai Rak Thai party for electoral fraud, banning him and TRT's executives from politics for five years.[15] The CNS-appointed Assets Examination Committee froze 76 billion baht ($2.2 billion) of his assets in Thailand, claiming he had become unusually wealthy while in office.[16][17] Thaksin and his family have declared assets totaling 15.1 billion baht when he took office in 2001.[18] To date, no legal judgments have yet been made about his wealth.
Thaksin returned to Thailand on 28 February 2008, after the TRT's successor party won the post-coup elections.[19] But after visiting Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics, he did not return to hear charges and applied for asylum in the United Kingdom. In October, the Supreme Court found him guilty of a conflict of interest and sentenced him in absentia to 2 years in jail.[20] In late 2008, Arabian Business reported after an exclusive interview that the UK froze $4.2 billion of his assets in the UK. However, the UK government has not confirmed or denied this claim.[21]
In April 2009, Thaksin supported anti-government protests by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship in their 2009 protests against the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, demanding true democracy.[22] Following violent clashes between the UDD and military forces in April 2009, Thaksin's passport was revoked.[23][24][25] Thaksin denied leading the UDD, claiming he only gave them "moral support."[26]
Thaksin married Potjaman Damapong in 1980. They have one son, Panthongtae and two daughters, Pintongtha and Peathongtarn. They divorced in 2008.
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