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  • OPINION

    Asean/SE Asia and the cycles of history

    Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 10/06/2022

    » The simmering geopolitical tensions between the United States and China and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine have turned the tide of history back to its historical norm. It is easy to see the global stage today as full of tension, confrontation, and conflict in a recurrent fashion. But it is worth recalling that merely 30 years ago, the world was in a different phase where a lasting peace seemed viable.

  • OPINION

    Thailand's prospects and risks in 2020s

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 31/01/2020

    » Notwithstanding recent worldwide celebrations to mark the arrival of 2020, Thailand should be seen as having entered not just a new year but a new decade. Since World War II, Thailand's journey over the ensuing decades meandered through ebbs and flows, overcoming critical bumps and barriers along the way. When 2030 arrives, this country of 70 million predominantly happy-go-lucky people will have faced a prolonged reckoning. While its near-term prospects are likely to worsen, Thailand's long-term future will be either better compared to the past two decades or bad for the long term.

  • OPINION

    What the rescue of the trapped boys means

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 13/07/2018

    » Global news cycles over the past two weeks have been saturated by Thailand's gripping story of 12 boys from a local youth football team and their 25-year-old coach trapped in a labyrinthine and partially submerged cave complex in the Chiang Rai hills in the north of the country. Even after their successful rescue, the story continues.

  • OPINION

    Can technology transform patronage politics?

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 30/03/2018

    » By the time it takes place after evident foot-dragging by relevant authorities, the next election in Thailand will be unlike its precursors. There will be new parties with new policy ideas, new vote-gathering technologies and first-time voters who came of age during Thailand's political tension and polarisation more or less over the past two decades. At issue during the next poll is whether and to what extent Thailand's entrenched and endemic patronage-driven and vote-buying political system has really changed. The evidence is mixed but it is plausible that a new kind of politics will emerge not directly in the next poll but in the 2020s.

  • OPINION

    17,410,742 Britons versus the world

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 01/07/2016

    » Thailand's recent habit of rejecting voter results through denial, manipulation and contrivance is apparently a global phenomenon. When it comes to the United Kingdom's spectacular referendum decision to leave the European Union, popularly known as "Brexit", the court of world public opinion does not like what it sees. Global critics have lamented and opined widely against Brexit voters, who numbered 17,410,742, representing a 51.89% overall majority from nearly a 72% turnout. But in many ways, Brexit may just be the wake-up call that the EU sorely needs. Making the best of Brexit should now be the task at hand rather than its reversal.

  • OPINION

    Charter draft has checks, lacks balances

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 06/03/2015

    » When political reforms themselves are reformed time and again, they can revert back to their pre-reform beginnings. This phenomenon appears to be afflicting Thailand's ongoing constitutional-drafting process, which is stuck in a circuitous time warp.

  • OPINION

    The myth of Thailand's demographic doom

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 20/03/2015

    » It is easy and tempting these days to be discouraged with Thailand. The place reeks of bad news, and is full of tension and challenges in its society, economy and politics. Yet the Thai story remains counterintuitive and compelling. With daunting dilemmas in all directions, Thailand should not have space for complacency. But it also should not be a place without hope.

  • OPINION

    Street rallies yield to parliamentary process

    News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 09/08/2013

    » It felt like deja vu for a while. As parliament reconvened, anti-government columns lined up, ready to rumble and depose the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, this time under a new rubric called the People's Democratic Force to Overthrow Thaksinism (Pefot).

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