Showing 1 - 10 of 19
Commission on a mission
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 17/03/2019
» "The Election Commission shall announce the result of the election", and there really hasn't been any more vast difference between the EC and the members of the public. It's not even supposed to be a worry. But everyone's worrying about the scraping of all the foreign votes and the vital gathering of all today's advance votes and the really major assembling next week of every one-person-one-vote.
The hand that feeds them
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 03/03/2019
» When the columnists and panjandrums and degree-clutchers come to analyse the state of Thailand in mid- and late May, it's probably this past week that will fascinate them.
Easy choices made difficult
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 23/12/2018
» Lucius Edward William Plantagenet Cary, aka Lord Falkland, went to his death in the English Civil war, leaving little of note except a rule that could be the official motto of libertarians.
Independence muted
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 09/12/2018
» The famously annoyable general prime minister was annoyed last week. The country's two largest political parties politely RSVP'd his invitation to a prayer meeting but declined because of the raucous nature of the worship.
The kids are all right
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 28/10/2018
» Prathet Ku Mee is no slapped-together concert song. It wasn't made, so much as crafted. The accusatory lyrics are set against the shameful, hovering background of the 1976 dictators' massacre at Thammasat University. The rap song's finale brings the background image of the hanged, beaten student to the front of the picture, before fading out to the hopeful message, "All people unite".
Into the political fray
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 30/09/2018
» Last June 30, the sometimes-accurate online Wikipedia updated the opening line of its entry on the general prime minister. For the first time, the introduction read, "Prayut Chan-o-cha is a Thai politician..." Before that, according to Wikipedia, Gen (Ret) Prayut was just a retired army general and head of the military junta -- which is what he claimed to be.
Facts, fake news and media control
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 02/09/2018
» While the regular comedy clubs that ban political humour are running as usual, the best line of the week was actually the statement:
Turning red into green
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 22/07/2018
» Rarely in recent Thai political history has a government minister been so honest, so open and so utterly truthful as was PM's Office Minister Kobsak Pootrakool last Sunday.
A walk in the Park
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 24/06/2018
» So the latest unchangeable, confirmed, guaranteed date of the 2015 Thailand general election isn't "definitely in February" after all, but some time in the next 371 days. To put it another way, voting will be, in the words of the country's official political cartographer, "early in 2019", or by Sunday, June 30.
Censors without borders
News, Alan Dawson, Published on 17/06/2018
» US President Donald Trump announced last Thursday that the North Korean nuclear threat is over, and that "fake news" is thus the No.1 threat. The men of Asia's only remaining military regime nodded.