• OPINION

  The three gutsy peers

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 16/09/2018

  » The six-month Bangkok Shutdown campaign may have given off an aura of fun and games with a positive outcome for the green shirts and a negative one for the reds.

• OPINION

  Go to Plan B

  Alan Dawson, Published on 13/01/2019

  » Normally notable for his silence, the Minister of Interior and inflatable blimp expert Gen Anupong Paojinda released the cat from his bag. His drones and workers, who had already begun setting up election facilities and security barriers, downed tools.

• OPINION

  Fairness needs to be ensured

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 27/01/2019

  » In sports, as in politics, they call it a "tilted playing field". One or many tiny modifications to the game area give advantages that don't absolutely guarantee that the home team wins, but help to make it more likely.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  The death of vote-buying

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 25/11/2018

  » The government announced a brand new and unexpected Big Welfare Aid Programme (BWAP). Cynics, sceptics, anti-regime critics and even honest people wondered if the sudden decision to help the least-advantaged Thais just possibly has something to do with that other government programme -- so tantalisingly unspecified -- of an election that for the fourth year in a row has been pencilled in for, in the highly familiar phrase used by the general prime minister, "next year".

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  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.

• OPINION

  It's the corruption, stupid

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 27/05/2018

  » After promising the nation a Mercedes Benz C-500 of an anti-regime protest, activists produced a three-owner 2007 Toyota Corolla gathering. It impressed and struck fear into the hearts of, well, no one.

• OPINION

  Big Brother's poll watch

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 10/06/2018

  » The next election, in 2019 or 2020 or so, will not be your grandfather's election. Or your mother's election or your elder sister's, either. Plans for the next election are more familiar to Cambodia's Hun Sen and survivors of Indonesia's late Suharto than to any Thai voter.

• OPINION

  Section 44 is forever

  News, Alan Dawson, Published on 16/04/2017

  » There exists in exceptional Thailand a force so powerful it only can be used for good or for evil. The men (exclusively) who run the country insist the power of Section 44 is (exclusively) designed and used only to produce positive results. Not everyone agrees.

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