Thaksin Shinawatra shows his true colours

On the face of it, the deal struck this week between Thailand’s military establishment and its second-biggest party, Pheu Thai, represents progress. The new coalition will end nine years of military-dominated government in South-East Asia’s oldest democracy. Under the influence of Pheu Thai’s de facto leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist tycoon and former prime minister who returned this week from a long exile, the new government should be less incompetent than its army-run predecessor. Democratically, too, Pheu Thai seems an improvement, having come a close second in the .But that would be to gloss what has really happened. The deal is not a win for Thai democracy so much as for the monarcho-military elite’s latest effort to stifle it. The elite is out to foil the election’s actual winner, a reformist party called Move Forward which is popular because it promises to break their grip on power. In helping to sabotage Move Forward, by doing a deal with the army establishment that his party had promised to shun, Mr Thaksin has revealed that he is no friend of but rather an instrument of the status quo.