Showing 1 - 6 of 6
'Scam-gate' deserves full accounting
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 24/10/2025
» The explosive revelations and allegations of regional cybercrimes and scam networks have hit Thailand head-on and placed the government of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul in an awkward and defensive position. As more facts surrounding what looks like a labyrinthine cross-border multibillion-dollar transnational criminal ring come to light, more questions have surfaced with no clear answers. The Anutin government needs to come clean and avoid a "scam-gate" of cover-ups and lies at the expense of countless scammed victims across many countries.
Thailand between the US and China
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 29/03/2024
» Amid what now has to be acknowledged as a direct non-military conflict and a geoeconomic war of sorts between the United States and China, Thailand is in a quandary. While characterising Thailand's geostrategic dilemma as a US-China binary can be exaggerated and misleading, it does have a point. As with many other developing countries in the region, Thailand will come under increasing pressure to choose between the two competing superpowers. The ability not to choose thus becomes an overarching geostrategic objective.
54 years on, Asean needs new modality
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 13/08/2021
» After 54 years of being together, Asean is at the end of its tether. It has never been more divided than now, split within member states and across all 10 of them, dominated once again by divisive superpower rivalry and competition. In practice, this means Asean will appear increasingly ineffectual and inert. There will be much bureaucratic motion but few substantive organisational and policy outcomes amid unresolved challenges from within and from outside the region. Asean's best way forward may require unprecedented radical thinking towards a multi-track organisation to ensure relevance and momentum where it can be generated.
Govt ducks Asean Myanmar challenge
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 23/04/2021
» Asean's highly anticipated "special" summit tomorrow in Jakarta on Myanmar's crisis can be declared moot on arrival. What goes into it is likely more telling that what will come out of it. Nearly three months and more than 730 civilian deaths after Myanmar's military coup on Feb 1, Asean is still unable to address its rogue member state's atrocities against its own people. The summit attendance foretells trends and dynamics of what might come next in Myanmar's fast-moving and deadly events on the ground and how they will shape regional responses and global concerns.
Asean's Myanmar crisis out of control
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 26/03/2021
» Myanmar's spiralling post-coup violence and bloodshed has become Asean's existential crisis. It is customary to pin hopes on an Asean way of fudging and nudging the main protagonists into some workable, face-saving compromise to save the day but this time the situation is dire and dark. Unless the 10-member regional organisation can make a difference in halting Myanmar's descent into uncontrollable violence and potential civil war, Asean is at risk of undermining and perhaps ending its success story.
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.