Billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra and his family have dominated Thai elections for much of the past two decades. A royalist establishment long saw the clan as a threat to its political power, and Shinawatras were ejected from office twice in military coups.
In August, however, the bitter rivals buried their differences, Thaksin returned from self-imposed exile and the Pheu Thai party he backs joined with pro-military groups in a new coalition government.
The about-turn was a response to the growing clout of a younger pro-democracy party, Move Forward, which campaigned harder than Pheu Thai against military rule and advocated changes to a law forbidding criticism of the monarchy.
The deal ended a political vacuum that’s been destabilizing Thailand’s economy. But many Thais were left wondering what the Shinawatras now stand for.
1. Who are the Shinawatras?
Descendants of a Chinese immigrant who married a Thai woman in the late 19th century, the Shinawatras are Thailand’s most prominent political dynasty, with two of its members occupying the country’s top political office at different times in the last 22 years.
The 74-year-old Thaksin has been a polarizing but enduring figure in the nation’s politics since he first became prime minister in 2001.
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A landslide victory for his Thai Rak Thai Party in 2005 won him a second term in office, which ended abruptly a year later in a military coup. Thaksin left Thailand in 2008 to avoid corruption charges he said were politically motivated. His sister Yingluck faced a similar fate after her Pheu Thai Party won an election in 2011 and made her Thailand’s first female prime minister. She was ousted by judicial order in 2014 and weeks later her government was toppled in yet another coup.
In May this year, after almost nine years of military-backed rule, Thaksin’s youngest daughter, 37-year-old Paetongtarn, ran for prime minister. Pheu Thai came second in the election, behind the progressive Move Forward Party that’s popular among young and urban voters.
2. How did the Shinawatras make their fortune?
Thaksin has portrayed himself as a self-made man from rural origins, but the family was already relatively wealthy when he was growing up. The origin of their fortune was a silk business his ancestors established in the north of the country in the early 20th century.
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During a 14-year career in the police force, Thaksin started dabbling in silk retail, cinemas, real estate and computer leasing — with little success — before striking it rich in the technology boom of the 1980s and 1990s. His head start in the computer business and his political connections allowed him to snap up government concessions to operate paging and mobile phone services, cable TV subscriptions, data networks and satellites.
At the height of his success, his Shin Corporation, now called Intouch Holdings, owned Thai mobile operator Advanced Info Service and satellite firm Shin Satellite (now Thaicom).
Shin Corp was sold to Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte in 2006. Today, Shinawatra family members including Thaksin’s ex-wife and three children — Panthongtae, Pintongta, and Paetongtarn — hold majority or controlling interests in companies spanning real estate to healthcare and hospitality. Some of those firms are listed on the Thai stock exchange, including property developer SC Asset, run by Thaksin’s son-in-law Nuttaphong Kunakornwong.
3. Why did the Thai establishment resent the Shinawatras?
The Shinawatras’ electoral and financial clout made them a formidable rival to the traditional elite made up of army generals, judges and senior civil servants that’s dominated Thailand’s powerful state institutions since the era of absolute monarchy ended in 1932. Thaksin’s entrepreneurial success and his credo of personal ambition and dignity echoed the American Dream and resonated with many ordinary Thais who had grown discontented with the paternalistic style of previous political leaders.
While many wealthier, well-educated and city-dwelling Thais accused Thaksin of cronyism, reckless populism and corruption, he enjoyed wide support among poorer and working-class voters in the country’s north and northeast who made up the majority of the Thai electorate and benefited from his big-ticket economic programs that came to be known as “Thaksinomics.” The groundswell of support for Thaksin was seen by the establishment as a threat to the country’s social hierarchy, in which the monarchy is perceived to sit at the top.
4. Why are the Shinawatras still popular?
In the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Thaksin spent heavily on grassroots measures designed to stimulate domestic demand such as debt moratorium plans for farmers, low-cost housing projects and loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. His flagship universal healthcare initiative of 2002 revolutionized access for poor people to medical care and has benefited millions of Thais two decades later. Its “gold card” is held by 47 million Thais, or 70% of the population.
The loyalty this inspired among less affluent voters helped political parties linked to Thaksin to win the most parliamentary seats in four successive elections between 2001 and 2019, only for them to be dissolved by the constitutional court or removed from power by force. Thaksin’s supporters formed the pro-democracy “Red Shirt” movement in 2007 to protest against his removal, and often clashed with the rival royalist “Yellow Shirt” group that sought to eradicate the Shinawatras from Thai politics.
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5. Why did Thaksin and Yingluck go into exile?
Opponents accused Thaksin of abusing his power to promote his family’s business interests. The sales of the Shinawatras’ majority stakes in Shin Corp to a foreign company were seen as the final straw, and mass protests by the Yellow Shirts eventually led to his downfall. Thaksin claimed assassination attempts were made against him before and after the 2006 coup, making him fear for his safety if he remained in Thailand. His then-wife Pojamarn Damapong was sentenced to jail for tax evasion linked to a transfer of Shin Corp shares, and Thaksin decided to flee in 2008 to avoid corruption charges.
He’s spent the intervening years shuttling between Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and London, and been found guilty in absentia in four graft cases. The offenses included illegally concealing shares in Shin Corp and conflicts of interest over a state bank loan to Myanmar that benefited Shin Satellite.
Thaksin was ordered to serve eight years in prison after he returned to Thailand, and was expected to petition for a royal pardon. Yingluck fled in 2017 and a court later sentenced her to five years in prison for criminal negligence in a rice subsidy program that cost the state billions of dollars.
6. Why did the Shinawatras make peace with the conservative elite?
Thaksin had tried to return to Thailand several times over the years, but his plans never came through or went awry. In 2013, Yingluck’s government introduced an amnesty bill that would have paved the way for him to come home and avoid jail, but it sparked mass protests that eventually led to the 2014 coup that toppled her government.
What eventually sealed his return was the rise of the upstart political movement Move Forward and its resounding win in the May election. The party pushed for changes to the law that restricts what can be said about the nation’s powerful monarchy and won support from many younger Thais disillusioned with the status quo. Pro-establishment parties were handed a decisive defeat and the conservative elite needed an ally to block Move Forward from taking power.
The Shinawatras also had an interest in thwarting Move Forward, whose pledge to improve living standards with large-scale social welfare programs challenged Pheu Thai’s status as the party of the working class. So the long-time rivals forged a deal that would let Thaksin come home and allow the conservatives to be in a new Pheu Thai-led government.
The truce may mark an end to the cycle of coups and deadly street protests that have eroded the nation’s competitiveness as a Southeast Asian manufacturing destination since the turn of the century.
