Thaksin Shinawatra is Thailand's flamboyant and controversial prime minister, a wealthy telecom magnate who has transformed the domestic political scene in significant ways since his landslide election in 2001.
This fine book describes how he has taken advantage of the opportunities created by the financial crisis and new constitution of 1997 to nurture an authoritarian democracy in thrall to well-connected business conglomerates. The authors argue that his influence is pernicious and detrimental to Thailand's political development.
Who is Thaksin? In the authors' view, "a representative of the nouveau riche Sino-Thai business elite, given to the flaunting of wealth and conspicuous consumption." He is depicted as the natural outcome of the merger of money and politics in Thailand over the past 25 years. He has fully exploited the concentration of executive power laid out in the 1997 constitution while undermining the new institutions designed to promote accountability and curb abuse of such powers. His "approach to the new institutions was to penetrate them, politicize them and to subordinate them to his own will and purposes."