Groundhog Day in Thailand Began With Cop-Billionaire

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/groundhog-day-in-thailand-began-with-cop-billionaire.html

Groundhog Day in Thailand Began With Cop-Billionaire
By Bloomberg News 2014-06-02T08:57:08Z

Thailand’s military and its backers have yet to map out a solution to political instability that’s produced five prime ministers in eight years. Their challenge is addressing a dynamic that began with an ex-cop two decades ago.

Thaksin Shinawatra, a police officer from the north of the country who ran a business selling computers on the side, won a monopoly license to set up Thailand’s first mobile-phone network. As his wealth swelled in the 1990s, he broke with fellow newly minted tycoons by entering politics -- and in so doing posed the biggest threat yet to an elite of army officers, civil servants and executives centered in Bangkok that extols the monarchy.

With a platform of expanded public services and aid to the lower-income households in the northeast, Thaksin’s political organizations achieved a lock on electoral majorities that’s been unbroken since 2001. After repeated coups and judicial ousters of governments linked to him, one option for the interim leaders may be a game-changing revamp of voting rules.

“Here we go again -- the military comes in with support from the royalists -- it’s like Groundhog Day,” said Paul Chambers director of research at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai, referring to the film where Bill Murray’s character repeatedly relives the same day.