The full consequences of these developments, however, took time to emerge. Thaksin Shinawatra positioned himself at the head of a challenge to the old system. But initially he challenged only the excessive power of the central bureaucracy and the old political guard of the democrat party, which he pictured as bureaucratic in style. Thaksin promised to rescue the economy from the crisis and take Thailand into the ranks of First world countries by shouldering aside the bureaucracy and running the country like a business. At the start, he was enthusiastically supported by the business community and most of the middle class.
But a challenge to one part of the oligarchy gradually came to be seen as a threat to all of it. The bureaucrats resented and resisted Thaksin’s efforts at reform. Because history showed that reformers in Thailand risk being ejected by coup, Thaksin tried to exert control over the military. But his efforts were clumsy, and he ended up antagonizing powerful factions in the military elite. Business initially cheered Thaksin’s efforts, but then turned sour when it became obvious that most of the benefits accrued to a small coterie of families clustered around Thaksin, and especially Thaksin’s own family businesses. The palace also showed its displeasure. This was shaping up as a classic inter-elite battle, of which there are many examples in Thailand’s recent past. But the scene was totally changed by the new element in the political context the upsurge of a demand from below for better access to power, better treatment, and more public goods.