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Showing 1-9 of 9 results
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Asian elections, democracy in 2024
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 29/12/2023
» Billed as the biggest election year ever as more than half of the global population goes to the polls, 2024 will be critical to the debate about democratisation and autocratisation. Asia will lead the way with elections in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia, while the most recent polls in Myanmar and Thailand offer long-term lessons about democracy and dictatorship. The salient themes next year will be about the self-perpetuating tendencies of incumbent regimes and the resilience of democratic rule when authoritarianism seemed to have the upper hand.
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Correcting the pandemic policy tack
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 30/07/2021
» That Thailand's coronavirus pandemic has been grossly mismanaged is self-evident. Infection rates have soared to new highs this month while vaccine availability and access remain shoddy and abysmal. The overstretched healthcare system is creaking under growing demand, while several scenes so far of Covid-afflicted people being left to die on the streets have shaken the country's collective morale and elicited soul-searching questions about how Thailand has managed to reach this dire juncture.
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Poll results point to clear way forward
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 26/04/2019
» Despite the controversy and confusion over Thailand's March 24 election outcome, its immediate and far-reaching implications are indisputable.
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Royal command sets a new balance
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 11/02/2019
» Thailand's political earthquake last Friday has caught observers at home and abroad off guard. Within half a day, Thai politics went through an unprecedented political roller coaster. It all ended with a press release from the royal palace at night, effectively reversing what had taken place in the morning.
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Royal transition explains military's grip
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 13/10/2017
» Hindsight will look back at Thailand's prolonged political interregnum after the military coup on 22 May 2014 with perplexity and astonishment. It will be remembered as a time of junta rule in a country that had overthrown military dictatorships repeatedly in 1973 and 1992. This time, the self-styled strongman from the barracks was Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, who would end up in office for longer than most elected leaders before him. There will be many questions and criticisms of Gen Prayut's tenure and rule but undergirding them will be his unrivalled role a year ago today, on 13 Oct 2016, with the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The consequent royal transition is likely to be viewed in posterity as the principal reason why the Thai people have had to put up with Gen Prayut.
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Punishment, crime and justice in Thailand
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 04/03/2016
» Thailand's political polarisation knows no bounds. The raging controversy over media personality Sorrayuth Suthassanachinda's criminal conviction is merely the latest manifestation of a morality war being waged in Thai politics over the past decade between the rightful and the righteous for the country's future power and soul. While it does not seem that way on the surface in Sorrayuth's case, closer scrutiny indicates otherwise. The case also instructs us that such polarisation is no good for Thailand, that middle and third ways are still the only pathway out of the country's holding position.
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Puey's passage stirs up old questions, issues
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 11/03/2016
» As Thai society has been caught up in a cultish and contentious search for the khon dee, or "good people", few can be more justifiably glorified than Puey Ungphakorn, a heroic Thai patriot from the Second World War and a quintessential technocrat who worked under military-authoritarian rule without selling his soul to it. This week marks the centennial of his life, with an outpouring of tributes and adulations around campuses and offices and in the minds of many. The questions and issues that preoccupied him in his prime throughout the 1950s-70s are still at the heart of what ails Thai society today.
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A saga and sideshow with much at stake
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 09/01/2015
» The impeachment case against former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra this month for dereliction of duty while in office over the rice-pledging budgetary losses is both a saga and a sideshow.
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Thailand risks becoming a train wreck
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 28/02/2014
» Most countries are unhappy in different ways but none is shooting itself in the foot more than Thailand. From Ukraine and Venezuela to Turkey, societies across continents are beset by social unrest and civil strife. What sets Thailand apart is that it has so much going for it, well endowed at home with immense goodwill from abroad. The Thai crisis is becoming a tragic train wreck and unfolding in destructive ways that few seem able to do much about, as both sides dig in for the long haul.
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