Implications of Newin's political fortunes | Bangkok Post: opinion

THAI POLITICS

Few politicians have benefited from Thailand's strangely short collective memory as much as Newin Chidchob, the provincial baron from Buri Ram. Despite his ban on holding political office for five years from May 2007, Mr Newin is the de facto leader of Bhumjaithai Party, a small partner in the coalition government with disproportionate power.

Mr Newin is the most resilient, recycled and re-invented politician of the past two decades. His rise, decline, rehabilitation and current resurgence betrays Thailand's official narrative that a corrupt regime was necessarily overthrown to bring in a cleaner government.

Mr Newin shot into the national limelight in the mid-1990s. He leveraged his control over a squad of MPs from Buri Ram and adjoining provinces in the lower northeast to position himself in the Chart Thai Party, which stole a narrow victory over the Democrat Party in the July 1995 general election. Mr Newin was then head of an informal, younger crowd of politicians known as the Group of 16. So unsavoury was this group's reputation that its members were labelled "yucky" when they were appointed to the cabinet of Banharn Silpa-archa. Mr Newin became deputy finance minister.