In The Clear

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He wears a burgundy top, a traditional, collarless Northern Thai vestment, and sits on a cushion on the soft teak floor under a pavilion next to a bubbling stream while young women in ornate sarongs parade past with plates of spicy chicken, sticky rice and boned freshwater fish. A famous oenophile, he sips an expensive Bordeaux, brought to Chiang Mai from his own cellars. His entourage, a collection of cronies and political allies for whom Thaksin has been criticized, is gathered around him at other low tables. For a putative reformist, he has surrounded himself with numerous politicians associated with corruption-tainted governments from the past. Suwit Khunkitti, Shucheep Harnsawad and Sonthaya Khunpleum are seated nearby, keeping a wary eye on Thaksin as if he might wander away, leaving them once again out of power.

His experience as a CEO, he believes, has trained him in the handling of divergent personalities and the management of sometimes discordant deputies. "Running a government and running an economy are very similar to running a corporation. And in the new economic order, global free trade is just like mergers and acquisitions. You have to be fearless. And I am fearless in business. When I went to Las Vegas, I only bought $5,000 in chips. But when I'm making a deal, I'll play with $50 million."

When asked about the impending ruling and the possibility that all these official perquisites would come to an end if he is not acquitted, he shakes his head. "If there is a decision that needs to be made to benefit the people and the country but there is a law prohibiting it, don't worry, we'll change the law."

His chief policy adviser, Pansak Vinyaratn, is more blunt: "Don't f___ with Thaksin."

Thaksin grew up not far from that hotel, in Sankampaeng, near Chiang Mai, the second of 10 siblings. His father, a Chinese merchant who tried his hand at jobs ranging from bus driving to running a movie theater, was a modest success who would eventually rise to serve in parliament. Thaksin has steadily propagated the myth that he grew up impoverished. His aunt, Chansom Shinawatra, 78, however, shrugs when asked about the Shinawatra family circumstances: "We did well." Well enough, according to some of Thaksin's childhood friends, for the strapping, big-eared boy to own the only bicycle in the neighborhood. "He was very generous with it," says former schoolmate Suthat Chaiongkon. "He let us take turns riding it."

All those who knew the boy recall a hardworking student, one who shot his hand up when the teacher scribbled a math problem on the chalkboard, shouting "chaiyo" (victory) when he inevitably got the right answer. He usually finished his homework in a matter of minutes. Still, the star pupil with the outsized cranium—his nickname among his buddies was Fat Head—was no geek. "He was popular with the other boys and not shy at all," says his second-grade teacher Srimoon Kantha. "I remember him flexing his muscles, saying 'I'm going to grow up and be a hero.'"

Indeed, Thaksin does possess that rarest commingling of attributes: stellar academic prowess combined with an easy-going cool. For a math whiz, he doesn't come across as being only about differential calculus and regression analysis—he successfully communicates greater depth and a sort of popular-kid charisma. His aunt remembers him as always being a leader, even in the days when he and the other boys were making banana-tree stalks into toy horses and riding around, pretending to be cowboys.

To this day, he says that part of him regrets not following his first aptitude, mathematics, and becoming an engineer. His thought patterns are still those of a scientist or mathematician, and he likes to boast that political and policy issues can all be solved with enough analysis and scientific reasoning. "Everything I do, I research and find a scientific answer," he says. "If the analysis is right, I'm never reluctant to make a decision." This is the hubris of the technocrat, one who believes he can wear down Thailand's problems with sheer studiousness.

If Thaksin were just an A-student, however, he wouldn't have risen to such lofty political heights. He attributes his political successes to his early business failures. After graduating from the Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy—he says he attended the military academy and then the police academy because he didn't want to attend a co-ed engineering school—he married Pojarmarn Damapong, the daughter of a police general. Along with his new bride, he moved to the United States, enrolling in a doctoral program at Sam Houston State University in Texas. The future Prime Minister earned his tuition working behind the counter of a Kentucky Fried Chicken while his wife baby-sat to make extra money. Their first son was born there, and retains his American citizenship. Thaksin and his wife would have four more children. Upon his return to Thailand, Thaksin embarked on a string of disastrous business endeavors. He joined the Bangkok Metropolitan Police Bureau and began teaching at police schools, his salary from the department coming to about $150 a month. While many police in Thailand are notorious for supplementing their income with graft and payoffs, Thaksin, to his credit, instead cooked up numerous business schemes, from going into the family silk business to producing and distributing films to buying and selling commodities to building condominiums. All of them were failures. This is the dark period he insists contributed the most to making him who he is today. He recalls coming home after finding out from the bank that he had bounced another round of checks to suppliers, shamefacedly admitting to his wife he had blown it again, then walking into the bedroom where his son lay sleeping and wondering how he would ever provide them with a better life. His business shortcomings were not for lack of effort or seriousness—he had been using his vaunted scientific reasoning, yet every time he launched a new venture, he would be blindsided by a real-estate downturn or a baht devaluation. If you know that feeling of failure, he says, the futility of trying your best and still screwing up, you discover new strength of character and fortitude. "One of the hardest things for any man to do is to tell your wife you've failed," he says.

It was through his wife that he secured the connections that would launch his first successful business: leasing computers to the police department. This venture would also be the first to bear the taint of cronyism and conflict of interest that has also been a hallmark of Thaksin's vast financial success. He insists there was no impropriety to his working for the police department while he was leasing it equipment. His wife ran the operation, almost as a blind trust, Thaksin has always said. (Business partners who knew him during that period say Thaksin was always intimately involved in running the business.)

Though his rise was due in part to his ability to work the halls of power and gain crucial government concessions, he has also been a bold innovator in numerous markets. His early bids for the pager business and the mobile phone business, and his gumption in launching the first Thai satellite when most analysts and experts said that wasn't a viable business are all achievements Thaksin can take credit for. But like most successful businessmen who are handed virtual monopolies, as Thaksin was with his most profitable enterprise, his mobile phone empire, he sometimes overstates the role his business acumen played in securing his windfall.

Still, in the days before the verdict, he reflected often upon those years of bounced checks and the tiny, rickety Bangrak house with the frequently flooded downstairs that he had to manually pump out whenever it rained. Even if the court came back against him, even in the worst-case scenario of a ban from politics, he swore he would survive it as he had survived those years in the business wilderness. "The road to victory is never rosy," he says. "I think I've learned more from failure. I think it's hard to be a great man if you have never tasted failure. Look, if they tell me I have to go, then I'll go. But I'll never really go away."

The executive office in Bangkok's government House is a rectangular room painted a cool shade of blue. Thaksin's vast, mahogany desk sits before a portrait of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, two immense rococo urns and a cabinet of Siamese vases. His work space is clear, save for a Phillips computer and laser printer. The effect of sitting in this room, with its plush oriental carpets and quiet rush of air-conditioning, is a little like being submerged. Voices are muted. Movements seem unnaturally slow. It is as if Thaksin's aura of measured patience radiates outward, catching even his aides, who usually scurry about delivering sheaves of paper and answering mobile phones, in a tranquilizing bubble.

Those aides lately have been strongly imploring that no questions be asked about the Constitutional Court and the corruption charges. They whisper that the Prime Minister would like to talk about policy, his family, his history, anything else. Thaksin's temper has erupted several times during recent months when journalists have asked him about his case.

Thaksin, however, seems unfazed when the question of the verdict comes up. He shrugs: "The people want me to stay and the people know what's right for Thailand. And who should I be more loyal to? The people? Or to the court? I love people. I want to work for them."

The question of what will happen to Thailand's fragile reforms, to the corruption commission and the authority of the Constitutional Court does not interest him. In this campaign to stay in power, he has striven to make himself appear above the process and therefore above the law. The reasoning that the love of the people should trump the rule of law is specious and dangerous. "I wouldn't say reform will be dead," says Thepchai Yong, a columnist for the Nation newspaper, "but you could say it's in critical condition."

Thaksin, sitting behind his desk, talking about his plans for the economy and for his future, seems oblivious to the collateral damage his case might have caused. He believes, he really does, that he knows what's best for Thailand, and that might mean going beyond and above the law to achieve what he is convinced is the greater good. The corruption, the collapsed economy, the inconsistent foreign policy—leave it to him. Those are management issues. Committees will be formed. Research papers drawn up. Policies implemented. Remember, he's a good manager, a visionary CEO—and if it worked for him, made him rich, then surely, you'll be next.

With reporting by Robert Horn/Bangkok

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