THAILAND: An Annoying Neighbor; Thailand's prime minister has huge support at home, but his brash style is alienating other countries in the region.

Byline: Joe Cochrane (With Lorien Holland in Kuala Lumpur)

Thaksin Shinawatra was in his favorite situation last week: declaring victory. The superconfident prime minister of Thailand stood before television cameras to announce that he had handily won the country's Feb. 6 parliamentary election--just minutes after the voting booths had closed. "The numbers are more than enough to establish a one-party government," he boasted, citing exit polls. Thaksin's cockiness--as much as the fact that his ruling Thai Rak Thai Party had, in fact, scored the biggest election victory in the country's history, winning more than 350 out of 500 seats--was more than his opponents could bear. "He's as arrogant as ever," sighs Surin Pitsuwan, a senior member of the main opposition Democrat Party. "It's not very Thai."

Indeed, since he took office in 2001, Thaksin, 55, has become a unique phenomenon in the country's political landscape. He is the first Thai prime minister ever to serve out a full term in a political system once dominated by shaky coalitions. He's been quick to implement populist policies, including all-but-free health care, debt relief for farmers and easy microcredit loans, while also building one of the strongest economies in Asia. His success at home has left opposition parties in the dust.

His position, however, is far less esteemed among Thailand's neighbors. The tycoon prime minister, whose family-owned Shin Corp. is the country's largest telecommunications firm, took office determined both to change Thailand and to transform himself into a regional statesman. To some he looked to be inheriting the mantle of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Southeast Asia's most powerful (and irascible) voice. That aspiration now seems a long shot: Thaksin's grandstanding and harsh policies toward Muslim separatists have infuriated heavily Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. He's angered the West with his authoritarian style and willingness to do business with Burma. Even his response to the tsunami has become something of an irritant: he annoyed Indonesia by suddenly pressing to make Thailand the base for a regional tsunami warning system, a $50 billion endeavor that will involve major new telecom projects. The move was viewed as self-serving, although there has been no announcement of any related Shin Corp. contracts.

An eleventh-hour election ploy underscores both Thaksin's style and its tendency to backfire outside Thailand's borders. Ten days before the poll he announced that Malaysia had captured a leading member of a bloody Islamic separatist movement in Thailand's Muslim south and may extradite him. Malaysia, which hadn't been consulted, responded angrily, saying they would likely not turn over the suspect, who is a Malaysian citizen. An unusually public tit-for-tat followed, which only further cemented Thaksin's credentials among Thai voters as an ultranationalist.

While Southeast Asian governments prefer to settle such delicate matters behind the scenes, Thaksin might ordinarily have been forgiven for using foreign relations to score points at home in the heat of an election campaign. But the Thai prime minister's gambit was just one of several incidents in recent months that have riled neighboring countries. Military repression of Islamic separatists in Thailand's historically restive southern provinces, which led to the deaths of 78 Muslim protesters while in military custody last October, sparked regional outrage. So did what was seen as an overly harsh Thai Army attack on armed militants at a mosque last April.

Critics say Thaksin's domestic political dominance has led to international hubris--a rampaging style that pays little heed to political niceties or the feelings of others. "He looks at the world as an extension of Thailand," says Pitsuwan, a former foreign ...