Thai leader proves he's Mr Popularity

BANGKOK - Talk about Big Brother. With his popularity badly flagging, Thailand's Prime Minister, a billionaire telecoms tycoon with an eye for the limelight, has taken to the road with a flurry of cameras to star in his own reality show.

After pitching a tent in a back garden in At Samart village, Thaksin Shinawatra has launched a programme entitled "Back Stage Show: Prime Minister", the basic premise of which is to throw money at the problems of the rural poor who bolstered his landslide victory last year and to magically eradicate their poverty in just five days.

It's a peculiar combination of "I'm a Celebrity - get me out of here" and "The Apprentice," with a few "Yes, Minister" reruns thrown in for good measure.

Thaksin arrived on set with a flourish in a trailer pulled by a motorised plough. After tipping the farmer driving it 2000 baht (about $70), more than 10 times the local minimum day wage, he began doling out prefab houses and plots of land in a bid to resuscitate his flagging popularity.

It certainly seems to be working. Fans flock, and promises of new prawn farms, repaved roads, and redredged canals are keeping them happy.

"I want officials to see and understand my way of thinking," Thaksin, whose strongest political base is made up of Thailand's rural poor, said. "No cosmetic work can be disguised from me. I will analyse all problems and solve them to show all people."

Unsurprisingly, Thaksin's latest gambit has left him vulnerable to mockery from his opponents, who condemn the television show as wasteful and in bad taste.

Critics claim the premier's new giveaway show is aimed to distract ordinary Thais from delays in his long-promised anti-corruption campaign, complaints about ongoing fair trade negotiations with the US and the mishandling of a simmering insurgency in the Muslim-majority south which has killed 1200 in two years.

Thailand's most prominent cable TV station, UBC, owned by the politically potent CP Group, has dispatched 40 cameras and a crew of more than a hundred to broadcast the Government roadshow round the clock.

And there's little chance the PM will be voted off any time soon, even though protesters demanding his resignation stormed into the Thai Parliament last Friday. He won his second five-year term last February by a landslide.

- INDEPENDENT