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power uncontested, but their support evaporated as they failed to prevent the economy from worsening over the next three years. Business and the urban middle class strongly voiced their resentment against inefficient politicians, government mismanagement and what they perceived as unfair IMF policies (such as the forced liberalisation/opening up to foreign ownership of Thai business). A new opportunity seemed to appear in the promise of a constitution which would create a better political system. This ‘people’s constitution’ was passed on 27 September 1997. It enshrined human rights and freedom of expression and granted more power to a civil society to counter corruption.

Disappointed by the results of globalisation, spokespersons for rural constituencies and people at the grassroots now began to dominate debate on the country’s pattern of development, for example, how to enable rural society to re-absorb large numbers of jobless persons returning home. King Bhumibol emphasised the idea of self-sufficiency in his birthday speech in December 1997: ‘What is important is to have enough to eat and to live; and to have an economy which provides enough to eat and live…We need to move backwards in order to move forwards’.

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The Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, founded in the 1920s by the Chearavanont family, is Thailand’s largest business conglomerate and multinational corporation, consisting of agribusiness, retailers, 7-Eleven franchising and telecommunications.

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Thaksinocracy

In 2000, the economic crisis began to ease, leaving Thailand in urgent need of a new approach to development policy. Business had long since succeeded the military as the dominant force in politics. In 1998, the telecommunications billionaire and former police officer, Thaksin Shinawatra, founded the Thai Rak Thai (TRT or ‘Thai Loving Thai’) party, which corresponded with rising nationalism in the country after the Asian economic crisis. Thaksin chose to address two major sectors of society which had been deeply affected by the crisis – business and the countryside. Promising to help business recover, TRT gained support, especially from CP Group and Bangkok Bank. The party’s program included community empowerment and bottom-up grassroots development (through agrarian debt relief, village capital funds and cheap health care), which was to earn Thaksin a reputation as a populist.

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Thaksin was the first prime minister in Thai history to complete a four-year term of office.

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After winning an almost absolute majority in the national elections of 2001, Thaksin became prime minister. The decisive majority, along with constitutional provisions designed to strengthen the prime minister, made his a stable government. Much more than previous prime ministers, he made use of telecommunications to communicate with his electorate and dominated press and TV news. He quickly delivered what he had promised during the election campaign (on community empowerment and grassroots development). In 2005, Thaksin won an outright majority in national elections. His popularity among the grassroots was immense.

Thaksin was criticised nationally and internationally for his ‘war on drugs’, which began in 2003. It was seen as his means to shake up influential groups, suspected of having links to drug trafficking, that were dominating local politics and elections. The ‘war’ took over 2700 lives, many of which appeared to be extrajudicial killings by Thai police, according to human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Troubles in the Deep South

In 2001, Muslim separatist insurgents began attacking government property and personnel in Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. These three provinces once comprised the area of the historic kingdom of Pattani until it was conquered by the Chakri kings. Under King Chulalongkorn’s administrative reforms, the provinces came more directly under the sway of the centralised bureaucracy, which replaced the local ruling elite with governors and bureaucrats from Bangkok. During