Word: sundaravej
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Forget about any honeymoon. Just four months into his tenure, Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is battling for his political life. For more than a month, thousands of street protesters have rallied in Bangkok, even besieging Government House last week and forcing the 73-year-old P.M. to sneak to work through a back door. On June 27, the veteran politician, who also moonlights as a television chef, suffered the indignity of a parliamentary no-confidence vote; although Samak's six-party coalition, which controls two-thirds of the lower house, shot down the motion by a vote...
After just three months in office, Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has already bested naysayers who predicted his coalition government wouldn't last two weeks. Although he said last year that he was handpicked to run by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed by a military coup in 2006, Samak has recently distanced himself from the controversial, populist ex-premier. Sitting in the neo-Italianate splendor of Bangkok's Government House, Samak tells TIME's Hannah Beech that he doesn't take direction from Thaksin - and describes in detail the green curry and pork-tongue stew...
During his two months in power, Thailand's new Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej has declared war on various fronts. The feisty former governor of Bangkok has promised to rip up the country's current constitution, which was unveiled by the military junta that preceded Samak's ruling coalition. He has declared a no-holds-barred battle against Thailand's drug dealers, a fight that echoes a previous campaign by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the man widely considered to be Samak's political overlord. Samak has even vowed to imprison illegal immigrants who are members of a Burmese minority group...
...there's at least one Thai gourmet who may wish he'd stayed away from street food and stuck with pricier fare. Thailand's recently elected Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, boasts a famous palate; before he assumed the P.M. post, Samak hosted his own TV cooking show. But during a trip to neighboring Laos earlier this week, Samak sampled a chili-paste-and-fermented-fish concoction at a local market, and found to his considerable discomfort that the dish disagreed with him. On April 1 - and, no, this was no April Fool's joke - local newspapers put coverage...
...dance in Chiang Rai. "But in our hearts we still supported him." Such sentiments propelled the People Power Party (PPP) to victory in the first postcoup elections last December. A proxy for Thaksin, whose own party was disbanded by the junta, the PPP is led by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. His new Cabinet teems with Thaksin loyalists: the Foreign Minister is Thaksin's former lawyer, while his brother-in-law has been named Education Minister...