Thailand's prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has continued to struggle to shore up the public's confidence in his leadership and maintain a sense of authority over his partners in the coalition government. Abhisit was voted into office in December last year with the backing of a majority of members of parliament. But there have been constant doubts as to whether he truly has the support of all those who voted in his favour, many of whom have a reputation for being political opportunists, having previously been staunch allies of a controversial former prime minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006, Thaksin Shinawatra. Although Abhisit has managed to keep his government intact in the past eight months, on several important matters he has not enjoyed the firm support of his coalition partners.
In August Abhisit suffered a major setback, which may suggest that his influence is waning, when he failed to get his nomination for the role of police chief accepted by the board of the Royal Thai Police, despite the fact that the prime minister is the chairman of the board. The interior minister, Chavarat Charnvirakul, who is the head of a party in the coalition, Bhum Jai Thai (BJT), and the permanent secretary for the interior, Wichai Srikhwan, voted in favour of an alternative nomination. (The choice of police chief has become highly politicised, not least because Thaksin, a former police lieutenant-colonel, has long been thought to enjoy the backing of leading factions within the force.) The BJT has been one of the most troublesome parties in Abhisit's coalition. The party's de facto leader, Newin Chidchob, was instrumental in enabling Abhisit to become prime minister, and he has been able to gain significant political leverage from the move.
In addition to this embarrassing setback, Abhisit has suffered a drop in his approval ratings and appears to be losing the public's confidence in his ability to resolve the political crisis and revive the economy. Despite being regarded by his supporters as a highly qualified technocrat, in a recent opinion poll by a private higher education college, ABAC, he was seen as being less competent than Thaksin. Although Abhisit was deemed to have greater moral integrity and to be more trustworthy than Thaksin, he was regarded as being inferior to Thaksin in terms of his management skills.
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