A year ago, Thaksin persuaded the poor to elect a government of the rich.

This could never have happened without the crisis and without the Democrats. The crisis hit the rich hard. The recovery plan, devised by the IMF and implemented by the Democrats, set out to sacrifice Thai businesses to the neoliberal god of “reform”.

The rural areas were already stirred up by agrarian decline and by the city’s competition for resources of land, water and forest. Even before the crisis struck, rural protests had blocked almost every major project including power plants, dams, pipelines and waste schemes. The social pain of the crisis was dumped into the countryside, sending 3 million more into poverty. The Democrats showed little sympathy. They overturned concessions made by the previous government. They looked the other way while leaders were shot and protest camps torched.

So rich and poor had a common focus and a common enemy. Thaksin put together a political party of the big business survivors of the crisis along with their tax lawyers, legal advisers, bureaucrat cronies, and other hangers-on. He then talked to rural leaders, activists, and NGOs and put their suggestions on his election posters.

But in reality, in power, how do the interests of the rich and the poor fit together? How does Thaksin fit the pluto on the populism?

Since he launched into politics, Thaksin has been explicit: the main role of government is to boost business. At his keynote speech in Hong Kong last year, he said government had to create “a new class of entrepreneurs” which could move Thailand “up the value chain”.

His rhetoric focuses mainly on the small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs). The reality focuses mainly on the big ones. Apart from renaming an existing state bank as an SME bank, Thaksin’s government has done little for the SMEs.

In his heart, Thaksin knows that making business grow big means making big business grow. And that means helping the sort of corporations that are clustered in and around his Cabinet.

So it is not surprising that liberalisation of the media and telecommunications industries is stalled; that special favours go to auto companies; that certain companies are being handled by the TAMC; and that it is not clear whether overseas trips promote the interest of Thailand or the interests of members of the Cabinet. In this framework, there is no difference. Thaksin labels critics of “policy corruption” as unpatriotic, possibly insane, hostage to outdated (pre-pluto-populist) ideas, and certainly less clever than himself.

Meanwhile, what has he done for the poor? He has tried to implement every key point on his election platform, and a few things besides. The quality may be questionable. But he cannot be accused of bad faith. He has created more space for protest demands and negotiation.

But what is the goal of all this effort? In his Hong Kong speech, Thaksin made this very clear. The government had to “solve the problem of poverty of the majority” and “reduce the socio-economic gaps between the poor and the well-to-do, and, especially between the rural and urban sectors.” These efforts were needed “to ensure social cohesion and political stability, which will enable economic recovery and growth.”

In Tokyo in November, Thaksin again emphasised that his social policies were designed “to create a stable social platform for investment. Improving the quality of life at the grass-roots level will create a stable social platform—a cushion. This social harmony protects and enhances your investments.”

In short, social policies are a “cushion”, a way to soothe the lower ranks of society so they don’t create problems which obstruct entrepreneur-led growth. Under pluto-populism, the plutocrats make big money, and the people don’t make big trouble.

But these social policies have another, subtler purpose. When Thaksin talked to the NGOs and rural activists in 1999–2000, he adopted some of their vocabulary about sustainability, community, sufficiency, and self-reliance. Listening to his entourage, you could imagine they shared the activists’ vision of a rural society which shared in Thailand’s development as an equal, but distinctly different, partner.

But speaking in Singapore last year, Thaksin clarified that most of the rural policies—micro-credit, village revolving funds, one village one product—were attempts “to encourage Thais to be more entrepreneurial.” He does not want to strengthen farmers; he aims to turn them into businessmen. He’s not sentimental about communities; he sees them as potential corporations. The activists have a vision of sustaining a rural society that is distinctly different. Thaksin has a vision of turning the farmers into people who are more like himself.

In one of the most striking elements of the 2001 election campaign, Thaksin presented TRT policies as the outgrowth of his own life experience. The poster and ad ran: “I was a village kid. I started my schooling in a village school. I became a coffee dealer; helped my dad on his farm; delivered newspapers; got into mining; then computers. I once had a company with seven employees. Now it’s over 60,000 and a turnover of billions of baht. I put a satellite up in the sky. I invested overseas. I almost went bankrupt three times but now I have more wealth and property than I could ever have imagined.”

The policies to help the localities, save NPLs and, above all, promote entrepreneurship were the learnings of his own life. TRT’s vision was Thaksin’s biography applied nationwide.

Thaksin wants to spread the entrepreneurial ethic right through society. That is the hyphen which links pluto to populism. That is the magic which promises to overcome poverty, and also overcome the cultural gap between city and village. To put it another way, Thaksin has taken the aspiration of very “pillow and mat” migrant arriving in Siam/Thailand in the last century, and turned it into a vision for the whole nation.