Showing 1 - 10 of 32
Three main parties and two directions
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 16/01/2026
» Although Thailand's election campaign is reaching fever pitch ahead of voting day on Feb 8, the dynamics and contours of its final outcome can be gleaned from past polls over the last 25 years. Only once in January 2001, as was indicated in this space last week, were voter results fully honoured and carried out. Other elections were either upended by military coups or manipulated by judicial interventions.
Rethinking finance beyond aid
Oped, Justin Yifu Lin & Yan Wang, Published on 06/11/2025
» Traditional donors have sharply scaled back their aid commitments to developing countries over the past year. Some, like the United States, have virtually eliminated their aid programmes. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), official development assistance (ODA) from member countries declined by 7.1% in 2024, its first annual drop in six years.
Mekong region's chance to reset
Oped, Than Tha Aung, Published on 12/09/2025
» The 2025 Cambodia–Thailand border clashes did more than just revive old tensions. They have exposed the fault lines of the regional economy in Southeast Asia and the lower Mekong region, built on fragile interdependence.
Time to act on information warfare
Oped, Pawat Satayanurug, Published on 01/08/2025
» As tensions escalate along the Thai-Cambodian border, the unfolding conflict has become not only a confrontation of arms but also a war of narratives. For many in Thailand, this is the first time war has felt real. Not distant, not historical, but tangible: fighter jets in the sky, news of casualties, fear seeping into the national consciousness.
Thailand's cleaner grid is within reach
Oped, Rapeepat Ingkasit, Published on 11/06/2025
» Thailand is approaching a pivotal moment in shaping its energy future. The draft Power Development Plan 2024 (PDP2024) -- currently awaiting finalisation -- outlines the country's power strategy for the next two decades. But as it stands, the draft leans heavily on legacy thermal infrastructure, including continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Cracks in the system
Oped, Editorial, Published on 08/04/2025
» The earthquake's impact in Thailand has exposed profound failures in the nation's bureaucratic system, which proved dangerously inadequate in the face of the disaster.
Centre-left parties must regain relevance in Germany
Oped, Bartosz M Rydlinski, Published on 01/03/2025
» Germany's Social Democrats are one of the West's oldest political parties, with a legacy of advocating parliamentary democracy, opposing Nazism, and leading the modernisation of postwar Germany. In addition to many notable labour, economic, and human-rights reforms the party has implemented over the years, ex-SPD leader and West German chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the 1970s laid the groundwork for Germany's reunification in 1990.
Two wasted decades in Thai politics
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 20/12/2024
» Now that Thaksin Shinawatra appears actively back in Thai politics, it is demoralising to look back at Thailand's wasted time and opportunities. Once a promising country on the way from democratic transition to consolidation in the late 1990s, Thailand has become semi-autocratic, and its rocky political trajectory over the past two decades is now structural. The traditional institutions of power that grew out of the Cold War have been calling the shots in earlier decades and are just unwilling to let the country move forward in the immediate years ahead.
China: Benefactor or imperial menace?
Oped, Kasit Piromya, Published on 06/09/2024
» Since the start of the 21st century, China has shown its desire to recapture its previous position as the world's most powerful and influential nation. Centuries ago, China -- going by the name of the "Middle Kingdom" -- was the world's most influential nation until Western European countries arrived on the shores of the Chinese empire in the early 16th century.
Thai politics has turned upside down
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 23/08/2024
» The rise of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the return -- and re-entry, of her father, Thaksin Shinawatra, have turned Thai politics upside down. On the surface, Mr Thaksin still dominates Thai politics nearly 20 years after he was deposed by a military coup and exiled for most of that period. This time, his political power and influence are being exercised through his daughter Ms Paetongtarn. As the Shinawatra clan has been coopted by its former establishment adversaries, the past two decades of periodic elections, street protests, two military coups, two constitutions, and multiple judicial bans on political parties and elected politicians have entered a new chapter.