In Thailand’s rural heartland, former Thaksin loyalists count cost of nation’s ‘lost decades’

KHON KAEN/UDON THANI – For the past two decades, Thailand’s north-east rural heartland has been an electoral stronghold for Thaksin Shinawatra, delivering staunch support for the billionaire businessman’s brand of populist politics – even in his absence.

Hundreds of so-called “red-shirt” villages in rice-growing regions across provinces such as Khon Kaen and Udon Thani helped form the base of the pro-Thaksin political movement, with many residents travelling to Bangkok to join mass protests in the wake of Thaksin’s removal as prime minister in a 2006 military coup.

But such has been the sharp decline in Thaksin’s political fortunes – the 76-year-old was on Sept 9 ordered to serve one year in jail, less than two weeks after his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra was removed as prime minister – that he risks being abandoned by even his most ardent of voter bases.

“I’m reluctant to vote for Pheu Thai again,” said Mr Surat Kaephuang, a 62-year-old shopkeeper in Khon Kaen, referring to the Shinawatras’ political party.

“I see Thaksin as part of the establishment now because of all of his dealmaking with the conservatives. He has become part of the problem now.”

Wielding policies espousing universal healthcare, affordable housing and poverty alleviation, Thaksin cultivated the previously neglected rural vote to great effect, creating an electoral juggernaut that swept to power in 2001.

He would go on to become a highly polarising figure who would alter the Thai political landscape to such a degree that it set in motion a decades-long rivalry with a royalist, pro-military establishment that saw its hold on political power threatened – a struggle that is still playing out today.

Political turbulence

The rise and fall of Thaksin also signposts two decades of political upheaval, military coups and short-term compromises that have inhibited Thailand from reaching its economic potential, economists and analysts say.

“There’s been a long period where Thailand has been unable to focus on the bigger challenges that it faces, whether it’s economic reform, having a more stable political system, or being able to project power regionally,” said Ms Susannah Patton, director of the South-east Asia Programme at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think-tank.

“None of that has happened in Thailand for a long time because you haven’t had governments that have had a strong mandate. They have always had the threat of judicial or military intervention hanging over them, or they have been military-controlled governments that have lacked popular legitimacy, or now, in this case, minority governments that will be very transactional and short term in their focus.”

Thaksin went into self-exile after he was ousted in 2006. He made a triumphant return in 2023 with his Pheu Thai party back in the ascendancy, before Ms Paetongtarn was ousted as prime minister by the country’s Constitutional Court over her handling of a border conflict with Cambodia. She has been replaced by a minority government led by conservative Bhumjaithai Party’s Anutin Charnvirakul, who has pledged to call an election within four months.

In between, Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra was also elected prime minister before being removed by a Constitutional Court decision in a prelude to another coup in 2014, followed by a long stint of ineffectual military-controlled government.

“How can you have a future when you have no government stability, no government continuity, and you have constant intervention and disruption?” said Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

“You can never have a government that can move the economy forward because it doesn’t last that long.”

Sluggish economy

After years of economic underperformance, Thailand now finds itself confronting ageing demographics, stubbornly high household debt, and tougher competition for foreign investment and exports from fast-growing regional rivals such as Vietnam.

Thailand’s economy grew 2.4 per cent in 2024 and is expected to slow to 1.8 per cent growth in 2025, according to a downgraded forecast by the World Bank in July, citing slowing global demand and the impact of US tariffs on its exports. The bank also warned of long-term challenges to the economy, including a shrinking workforce due to Thailand’s ageing population, and a shortage of skilled digital workers.

More than 40 per cent of households live on insufficient income, according to the country’s National Statistics Office.

Ms Trinh Nguyen, senior economist covering emerging Asia at Natixis, said: “Because incomes haven’t risen, people have taken on debt, particularly in the rural areas. So you have a situation where household debt has become bigger, and you have an ageing population.”

Thailand’s estimated gross domestic product growth of 1.8 per cent for 2025 compares with an average of 5.4 per cent between 2000 and 2006, and 3.1 per cent during 2012 to 2018, according to Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), which ranked Thailand’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery at 162 out of 189 economies in 2024.

SCB warned that Thailand’s economy risks entering a Japanese-style economic stagnation extending until 2050 if a prolonged period of low growth damages Thai people’s confidence to spend.

Souring sentiment

In Khon Kaen and Udon Thani, a constant refrain from villagers is how they feel it is now harder to make ends meet than when Thaksin was prime minister. A sharp rise in cost of living and farming expenses has not been defrayed by a corresponding increase in wages or crop prices, they told The Straits Times.

“The reason why the farmers here are still poor is because every year, they have very high production costs,” said Ms Arunee Duangphrom, a rights advocate for workers employed in Thailand’s informal labour sector in Khon Kaen. “They have to invest in fertiliser, pesticides and hire working hands for harvesting.”

Mr Surat, the shopkeeper in Khon Kaen, said business at his modest convenience shop has been markedly slow as his customers have tightened their belts. He has taken to setting up a small stall selling fishballs and sausage skewers in front of his shop in the hopes of supplementing his income.

“Twenty to 30 years ago, it was much easier to earn money,” he said. “Now, the poor have been left behind, unable to earn enough money for day-to-day living.”

Mr Wiroj Saraban, the owner of an electronics repair shop in Khon Kaen, said some customers who had dropped off their televisions or radios are taking as long as a month to pick them up after repair due to being unable to pay.

Loyalties tested

Mr Wiroj said Thaksin had enjoyed enduring popularity in his community, like in many other villages in the area, thanks to his introduction of universal healthcare in 2002 that drastically brought down the cost of hospital and doctor visits. He also said many houses in his village could be built thanks to a low-income housing scheme Thaksin introduced in 2004.

“Even while Thaksin was in exile, the people here remained loyal to him,” he said.

Many villagers, however, have been disillusioned by the more recent years of economic stagnation, broken promises and a reversion to Bangkok-centric policymaking, with many citing an aborted digital wallet scheme, aimed at stimulating spending, and the prioritisation of pushing through a Bill to approve a major casino and entertainment complex in the capital, which has also been shelved under Mr Anutin, the new prime minister.

“I voted for the Pheu Thai government to work for the people, but when they had power again, they no longer cared any more,” said a coriander farmer in Udon Thani who gave her name only as Dee.

Another major recurring through line is concern over a lack of action on a major scourge of methamphetamine and addiction to other drugs affecting village youth, exacerbated by the lack of job prospects.

For that reason, villagers said they were disappointed that the Pheu Thai party entered into a coalition to form government with the pro-cannabis Bhumjaithai Party in 2023, and were unlikely to vote for Mr Anutin at the next election.

Mr Wiroj, 62, said previous governments had not done enough to create employment opportunities outside Bangkok and some industrial hubs in the country’s east, forcing many young people in the north-east to leave in search of better-paying jobs.

He said many in Khon Kaen, especially younger voters, are likely to switch their vote to the progressive People’s Party after it made significant inroads at the last election.

But Mr Wiroj and other older red shirts said they find the party too radical, and that its relative inexperience means that it would find it even harder than Pheu Thai to govern with the likely strong interference of conservative establishment forces.

Vicious circle

Indeed, Pheu Thai came to power after the May 2023 General Election only by entering a grand compromise with the conservative establishment parties to form a governing coalition to keep Thailand’s youth-led progressive movement out of power.

Many disillusioned younger Thais threw their support behind what was then the Future Forward Party, which was openly calling for wide-ranging reforms. The party was dissolved by court order in February 2020, sparking anti-government protests that expanded to calls for changes to royal defamation laws and the Constitution.

A newly formed successor, the Move Forward party, won the most seats at the 2023 election but was unable to form a government, and the movement is now in its third incarnation as the People’s Party after Move Forward was also dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 2024.

Chulalongkorn University’s Prof Thitinan said the most recent ouster of the Shinawatras is merely the latest in a recurrent pattern of military coups and judicial interventions demonstrating that the old guard behind the conservative establishment will not relinquish power easily.

“I think, some years ago, I would have said the situation was disheartening, depressing. Now, I’m saying (it’s) disgusting – disgusting because people who are doing this, they don’t care about the country, and the pattern is clear,” Prof Thitinan said.

“The conservative royalist establishment has been putting down present challenges at Thailand’s expense without much care.”