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Thaksin Shinawatra Tuesday announced in a subdued tone, that he was resigning as prime
minister, saying the time had come for unity and national
reconciliation.
The mood was quite different 14 months ago when Thaksin made history as
the first prime minister in modern Thai history to complete his full term
in office and win re-election.
During a campaign interview then, Mr. Thaksin, one of Thailand's
richest men, explained what made him so popular among the poor, rural
Thais who make up 70 percent of the population.
"I want to eradicate poverty. Poverty is very important," he said. "We
have to help them [poor people]."
Thaksin Shinawatra was born on July 26, 1949, into a family of silk
merchants originally from southern China.
He attended school in his native Chang Mai province, in northern
Thailand, and graduated from Thailand's Royal Police Academy in 1973. Five
years later he received a doctorate in criminal justice from Sam Houston
University in the United States.
In the mid-1980s, he founded an electronic paging and mobile telephone
company that grew into a multi-billion dollar telecommunications empire.
He entered politics only in the mid-1990s, serving in a coalition
government as foreign minister and deputy prime minister before founding
his own party in 1998, the Thai Rak Thai, or Thais Love Thais, party.
His party won the 2001 elections by a landslide. After surviving a
legal challenge to his victory, Thaksin implemented his populist policies:
subsidized public health programs, low-cost loans for rural poor, and
village-based micro-industries.
He also lowered interest rates, leading to a consumer-based economic
boom, and paid off early billions of dollars worth of international loans
left over from the 1997 financial crisis.
But economists said his fiscal policies were not sustainable. And human
rights groups accused his government of heavy-handed tactics in campaigns
to suppress the illegal drug trade and a separatist insurgency in the
Muslim-dominated south.
Moreover, media advocates complained that he muzzled criticism in the
press. And civic groups accused him of undermining checks-and-balances in
Thailand's fledgling democracy while favoring
business cronies and political allies with
lucrative government contracts.
The author of a book on the Thaksin era, Chris Baker, says Mr. Thaksin
was an innovative force in Thai politics.
"He had some very good policies indeed, both his social policies and
his economic policies," he said. "I think it is a pity that a man who
wanted to control the country cannot control himself or his family or his
cronies."
Thaskin resigned after months of protests that intensified after his
family's tax free-sale of nearly two billion dollars of stocks in the
company he founded.
In resigning, Mr. Thaksin said he would stay on as head of his party
and he left open the possibility of rejoining the political fray after
some time outside Thai politics.
Baker says whatever his future, Thaksin Shinawatra has changed Thai
politics.
"He has raised the expectation of mass of the people in this society
who in the past have not expected very much from politics, from
government," he added.
Baker says that as a result, millions of Thais, particularly in poor,
rural areas, have seen the value of their vote and its importance in a
democratic system. | 
