Leadership Quote by Thaksin Shinawatra

A politician doesn’t say “Don’t underestimate the people” unless someone already has. Thaksin Shinawatra’s line reads like a democratic pep talk, but it’s also a pointed rebuke aimed up the social ladder: at Bangkok’s establishment, at judges and generals, at media gatekeepers, at any class that treats rural voters as a problem to be managed rather than a public to be served. In Thailand’s modern political drama, “the people” isn’t a soothing abstraction; it’s the electoral majority that repeatedly backed Thaksin-aligned parties, and that was repeatedly met with coups, bans, and court interventions. The sentence is built to sting because it makes the anti-democratic move look not just immoral, but foolish.

“Let them decide” is deceptively simple. It frames elections as the only legitimate referee, pushing every extra-electoral intervention into the category of elitist panic. The subtext is: you fear their judgment because it won’t favor you. That’s a powerful rhetorical inversion; it casts technocratic paternalism as contempt and turns populist legitimacy into moral high ground.

There’s also a strategic self-portrait embedded here. Thaksin positions himself as the interpreter of popular will, the one confident enough to accept the verdict. Critics hear something else: a savvy populist insisting that majoritarian victory should override institutional checks, even when his own power is at stake. The line works because it doubles as both democratic principle and political weapon, daring opponents to argue, out loud, that the public can’t be trusted.