Northern Exposure

Worrawit Saepu resents being characterized as a money-grubbing illiterate too stupid to vote. The 23-year-old grew up in a village in northern Thailand and still passionately supports Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist prime minister ousted two years ago in a bloodless military coup. Worrawit and millions of other grassroots folk twice elected Thaksin and his Thai Rak Thai party in landslides. But critics insist their votes were bought and that they are not clever enough to choose their own representatives.

For many Thais in the countryside, Thaksin was the first prime minister to ever pay them any attention. Worrawit remembers when his village of Mae Saluk was overwhelmed by poverty and drug use. That changed when Thaksin became P.M. in 2001 and launched policies that included a "drug war" and programs to help the rural poor, including scholarships that helped send Worrawit to Chiang Mai University, where he now studies economics. "There was never any support for rural people until Thaksin," Worrawit says. "We may be stupid, but we do know what we got from Thaksin and why we appreciate him. Thaksin is a person who gave life to us. I regard him as a hero."

The 2006 coup that consigned Thaksin to exile threw Thailand into tumult that has seen four more prime ministers come and go. A fifth, Abhisit Vejjajiva, took office in mid-December. But his coalition government takes power with a thin majority cobbled together with the controversial support of a dissident faction of the People Power Party, successor to Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai. Abhisit's Democrat Party boasts deep support in Bangkok and the south, but winning over poor and rural citizens in the country's north and northeast will determine if he becomes a footnote in Thai history or something more lasting.

Success is hardly assured. The rural working classes are still seething over how they've been characterized as craven, malleable dunces by the People's Alliance for Democracy and their leaders are threatening to rise up if the new government attempts to act on a PAD proposal to disenfranchise them and establish a limited democracy. Yellow-shirt-wearing PAD members are demanding a "new politics" that would see some members of Parliament appointed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej. A rival group, United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), whose members wear red shirts, warns of nationwide protests against Abhisit.

For Thaksin detractors, the fugitive telecom billionaire is guilty of everything from corruption to abuse of power to trying to usurp the king's prerogatives. Rooted in Bangkok and the south, they insist that the masses that support the tycoon are guided only by basic—if not base—instincts. But conversations with people in Thailand's north and northeast suggest it is oversimplification to say Thaksin fans are swayed by handouts, that his economic policies amounted to vote-buying or even that he, his associates and his devotees are antimonarchy. Thaksin opponents seem most infuriated by his enduring appeal. Since the military deposed him in September 2006, he has been unable to return home for fear of imprisonment, but numerous Thais still devotedly follow his movements and pronouncements. His persistent popularity hinges on fond recall of his tenure in office but also, paradoxically, on his opponents' efforts to demonize him. Allegations that he was corrupt (and his conviction on such charges) are widely seen as false—trumped up by his enemies. It does not help that some attacks on him border on the hysterical. His name still moves the masses: Word that he will appear via videotape or live phone-in attracts tens of thousands to stadiums.

Thaksin's huge 2001 victory resulted largely from his decision to focus on the desires and disaffection of rural Thais. His administration offered affordable loans to village people wanting to establish small businesses; canceled debts of farmers struggling to eke out a subsistence from the infertile soil in the vast Isaan region; made elementary and secondary education accessible to more ordinary people and introduced the hugely popular "30-baht scheme" that provided universal access to health care, with each citizen paying 30 Thai baht —less than $1—for a hospital visit or admission. Such programs changed the lives of thousands mired in the margins of agriculture, still the biggest economic sector, with some 49 percent of Thais engaged in farming and related work. "People used to have to sell their land just to get treated at a hospital," says Kwanchai Pripana, radio-station owner and a fiery leader of the UDD in Udon Thani, Isaan's biggest city.