BANGKOK, Aug 22 — Thailand’s billionaire Shinawatra dynasty has dominated the kingdom’s politics for 25 years, despite coups and court cases including Friday’s lese-majeste acquittal of its patriarch.
A Bangkok court cleared 76-year-old Thaksin Shinawatra of breaching Thailand’s tough royal insult laws in an interview with South Korean media a decade ago.
AFP looks at the Shinawatra family’s turbulent quarter-century of dominating Thai politics and battling the kingdom’s traditional conservative elite.
Founding father
Thaksin served as a police officer before making his fortune in telecoms and launching the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, promising to use his business savvy to uplift the rural poor.
His populist policies won the devotion of countryside voters but the ire of the pro-monarchy, pro-military establishment that regarded him as an insurgent threat to the traditional social order.
He became premier in 2001 and was the first democratically elected Thai prime minister to serve a full term.
He was then re-elected in a landslide by voters grateful for cash injections amid the Asian financial crisis, leading the first Thai party ever to secure an overall majority alone.
Thailand’s suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra (centre) and her sister Pintongta Shinawatra (left) walk out of the Constitutional Court in Bangkok on August 21, 2025. — AFP pic
However, Thaksin was dogged by corruption allegations and months of protests. Tanks rolled into Bangkok while he was on an overseas trip in September 2006 and the military toppled his government.
He purchased Manchester City despite his Thai assets being frozen the following year, and later sold the British football club for a sizeable profit.
Thaksin took himself into exile in 2008 but never stopped commenting on national affairs – or, according to his critics, meddling in them.
A family affair
Thai Rak Thai was dissolved after the 2006 coup, but its successor, the People’s Power party, won the next election. Thaksin’s brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat was briefly prime minister in 2008 before the courts ordered that People’s Power be dismantled, too.
It evolved into the Pheu Thai (For Thais) party, which brought Thaksin’s sister Yingluck to power in 2011.
Yingluck was pilloried as a political lightweight armed with little more than a winning smile and a hotline to her elder brother – who once referred to her as his “clone”.
She courted the military but their shaky truce collapsed after a failed bid to pass an amnesty bill that would have enabled Thaksin’s return.
The move outraged government opponents, who flooded the streets for months-long protests marked by violence, with dozens killed and hundreds wounded.
Yingluck’s premiership was scuttled in 2014 by a court ruling and the military shunted the rest of her administration aside weeks later.
Supporters of Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra gather in front of the Criminal Court in Bangkok on August 22, 2025. — AFP pic
Inheriting influence
Thaksin threw his weight behind his youngest daughter Paetongtarn as she took up the Pheu Thai mantle in the 2023 election, transferring from a career in the hotel arm of the family’s sprawling business empire.
She was a near-constant presence on the campaign trail despite being heavily pregnant, regularly leading rallies in stifling tropical heat.
Pheu Thai finished second, but secured power by forming an unsteady alliance with their former enemies in pro-military parties.
Paetongtarn was appointed prime minister in August last year after the party’s first choice, Srettha Thavisin, was thrown out by the Constitutional Court.
Much like Yingluck, the 39-year-old Paetongtarn has been accused of being a Thaksin puppet.
More legal woes
Thaksin pledged repeatedly while in exile in Dubai to return to Thailand despite being convicted on graft and abuse-of-power charges in absentia.
He went back on the day Pheu Thai took power in August 2023, prompting speculation he had been granted leniency as part of a coalition bargain.
He was immediately arrested and sentenced to eight years in jail, but was whisked to a police hospital within hours on health grounds.
Thaksin later had his sentence cut by the king and was released six months after landing, without spending any time in prison.
Another court case is investigating those events after complaints that Thaksin had not served his sentence properly.
In another blow to the family, the Constitutional Court suspended Paetongtarn from office last month while it probes her actions during a diplomatic spat with Cambodia.
The court will rule on the case next week, and could sack her as prime minister.
With no suitable family members left to take on the mantle, that ruling could mark the end of the Shinawatras’ time in high office. — AFP
Rise, fall, repeat: How the Shinawatra clan redefined — and divided — Thai politics
