Showing 31-40 of 69 results
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Elections, corruption and Thai democracy
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 16/02/2018
» People at home and abroad are calling for elections in Thailand on the premise of returning democracy to a country that has been under nearly four years of military government. But elections cannot bring genuine democracy if blatant corruption rears its head in open daylight with utter impunity. No doubt elections will be needed to get rid of the current set of military rulers but democracy in Thailand requires the strengthening of its democratic institutions that are so shoddy and woeful.
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Is Thailand's civil society waking up again?
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 19/01/2018
» It is hard to believe how the military-backed government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha that appeared so strong not so long ago now looks shaky enough to be untenable.
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'Watch scandal' now and amnesty bill then
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 02/02/2018
» The gnawing scandal over Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon's dubious and expensive watches has become tantamount to the amnesty bill that upended the previous elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra, who is now on the run after being overthrown and subsequently convicted over the rice-pledging scheme. These two cases are ostensibly different but in fact they both spell the beginning of an inexorable end.
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A year of living dangerously in Thailand
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 05/01/2018
» They were supposed to be in power for the royal transition but they have stayed too long and now want to win an unavoidable election.
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Regional order in East Asia after summits
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 17/11/2017
» While Asean-related leaders' meetings tend to come and go with a lot of spectacle and brouhaha without much lasting substantive impact, the recently concluded summits of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Vietnam and the United States-Asean and the East Asia Summit in the Philippines will be seen in hindsight as highly consequential. The geopolitical and geoeconomic positions of just about all attending countries were more or less known before hand. This most recent summit season was about the policy orientation and preferences of the US under President Donald Trump.
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Thais, their late King and the last goodbye
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 20/10/2017
» Context will be hard to come by this coming week as Thais bid farewell to their late monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and his 70-year reign whose light gave out on Oct 13 last year. There is a mismatch of seeing Thailand today with all of its modernity and cosmopolitanism compared to how the country was shaped and formed in earlier decades. To understand the spectacle and outpouring of grief and respect this week leading to the cremation of King Bhumibol next Thursday, it is instructive to look back at the distance Thailand has travelled from where it began rather than its direction and destination, which are important but for another time.
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Cambodia leads regional authoritarianism
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 22/09/2017
» The warm hug on Sept 7 between Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Thai counterpart, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha, said it all. Authoritarian rule is ascendant in Southeast Asia. It now poses an existential challenge to human rights and democratisation all over the region. And Cambodia is leading Southeast Asia's authoritarian ways, followed not far behind by neighbours, such as Thailand.
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Thailand counts down to final, fond October
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 06/10/2017
» For the past four decades, the month of October has carried certain meanings and implications associated with a left-leaning student-led civil society uprising that overthrew a military dictatorship and a right-wing military-led suppression that crushed mostly university students and chased them into the jungle to join the local communist party.
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Thailand amid Asean economic integration
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 11/08/2017
» The first year and a half of the Asean Community has transpired not with a bang but a whimper. Thailand's role in it has been correspondingly uneventful. The first 18 months of the Asean Economic Community (AEC), one of three pillars together with the Asean Political-Security Community and Asean Socio-Cultural Community, witnessed no fundamental or qualitative differences from trade and investment patterns prior to its introduction. If the AEC is to work out as intended, it has to be reshaped and reoriented from traditional lenses to new realities based on intra-regional investments in tandem with global value chains.
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A way out after two trials in two decades
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 25/08/2017
» Once again, Thailand is gripped by another high-profile court trial in yet another round of political brinkmanship. The much anticipated verdict today on Yingluck Shinawatra's handling of the rice-pledging scheme while in office is reminiscent of her eldest brother Thaksin Shinawatra's assets concealment case 16 years ago. In fact, Thailand's political landscape so far in the 21st century can now be book-ended by these two politicised cases that are likely to end up with different outcomes while going in the same direction. In turn, the Yingluck verdict can serve as another reminder of what Thailand needs to do to move on from its two-decade political malaise underpinned by half a dozen elections, violent street protests, and two military coups.
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