With the ruling Thai Rak Thai party expecting a clean triumph at the polls on Sunday, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has little to worry about on the home front.
His main challenges over the next four years are more likely to come from abroad, analysts say.
"I think Thaksin's got the domestic situation all wrapped up, so he'll have to look to the international arena if he wants to make a mark in his second term," said Kobsak Chutikul, a former Foreign Ministry spokesman-turned-politician.
It is widely expected that the Thai Rak Thai will win more than 300 of the 500 contested seats in Sunday's general election, giving Thaksin and his party a clear mandate to pursue their own domestic policies.
Pursuing Thaksin's often ambitious goals abroad may prove more problematic. There are signs that his autocratic, authoritarian style has already irked some of Thailand's neighbors.
For instance, Thaksin's push to turn Thailand into a regional center for a regional tsunami early warning system in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 disaster was shot down at an international conference last weekend.
Among the chief objectors to Thailand's bid to take center stage was Indonesia.
A peeved Thaksin announced on Monday that Thailand would go ahead with setting up its own early warning system with or without regional cooperation.
"Some countries are concerned too much about themselves and are less concerned about the region," he said.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has made clear its foreign policy goal of regaining more of a leadership role in the ASEAN, which it has lost since the fall of Suharto, another autocratic Asian leader.
ASEAN has a long history of autocratic leaders who transformed their countries from chaotic backwaters into successful modern economies, as Lee Kuan-yew (李光耀) did for Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad did for Malaysia.
Suharto, Lee and Mahathir, all powerful personalities, also emerged as leaders within ASEAN, a role Thaksin clearly aspires to as well.
"He doesn't want to be a leader of a developing country," said one Western diplomat. "He considers himself leading an up-and-coming industrialized country, and considers Thailand to be a leader in the region."
Thailand may be a leader economically -- certainly it has recovered quicker from the 1997 Asian financial crisis than Indonesia -- but it will take more than economic and business clout to lead ASEAN politically, observers note.
Thaksin annoyed neighboring Malaysia with his accusations last year that it was sheltering Muslim separatists responsible for the rising tensions in Thailand's three southernmost, predominantly Muslim, provinces where more than 600 people died in violent clashes last year.
With the southern problem far from settled, Thaksin can look forward to tense relations with predominantly Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia in the near future.
And Thailand's fairly close relationship with Myanmar, cultivated by Thaksin, could turn into a major ASEAN embarrassment if the country's military leadership does not free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest by next year, when Myanmar will chair the regional grouping.
Another tough challenge for Thaksin will be his campaign to make Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai a candidate to replace UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is scheduled to retire in 2007. Surakiart's chances to be named UN chief are deemed slim.
"The UN secretary general has to have an image of being his own man, because his first loyalty has to be to the United Nations," said one Asian diplomat.
Surakiart's first loyalty has always been to Thaksin.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS