Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Chris Baker, Kyoto University
Last year, fire; this year, water.
The largest demonstrations in Thailand’s political history ended with over 90 deaths in April–May 2010, but 18 months later, with the country’s biggest floods in half a century, some believed that togetherness in suffering would revive a mythical ‘national unity’. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
Yesterday Thailand went to the polls to elect a new government.
The electorate is deeply polarised politically despite the Abhisit government’s attempts at national reconciliation after killings on the streets of Bangkok 14 months ago. Read more…
Author: Nicholas Farrelly, ANU
Thailand goes to the polls today for only the second time since the military coup of September 2006.
That coup was designed to obliterate the election-winning juggernaut commanded by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Read more…
Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University
The deadly military skirmishes between Thailand and Cambodia are attributable to domestic political dynamics in both countries.
Having claimed more than two dozen lives, scores of injuries and tens of thousands of displaced bystanders in the three months from February 2011, the conflict is rooted in historical enmity and colonial legacy, with adverse repercussions for regionalism in Southeast Asia and implications for international politics. Read more…
Author: Peter Warr, ANU
It has finally been announced that Thailand’s general election will be held on 3 July.
The election will be pivotal. Hopes are high that it may determine the next government amid little or no violence and thus resolve Thailand’s policy direction for the next several years. Read more…
Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun, ISEAS
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has given his word: the nation, submerged in growing political uncertainty, will go to the polls in the first half of this year.
The election is likely to be held in June. Read more…
Author: Chalongphob Sussangkarn, TDRI, Bangkok
The Red Shirts’ protracted occupation of a central Bangkok area and the eventual violent and deadly end in May 2010 reiterated the highly divisive situation in Thai politics.
This protest, like the Yellow Shirts’ closure of the Bangkok airport toward the end of 2008, had the potential to have extended negative impacts on the broader economy, particularly on foreigners’ confidence. Read more…
Author: Nicholas Farrelly, ANU
Over the past week Thailand’s Red Shirt protest movement has, once again, largely faded from international media coverage. Its key leaders have been arrested or are in hiding, and many others associated with Red Shirt politics in Thailand are now subjected to witch-hunts and official ridicule. Dozens have been killed, iconic buildings burned, and thousands have been left injured or traumatised.
Thailand’s reputed national ethos of compromise and conciliation has been pulverised beyond recognition. Insofar as the Thai government can claim a momentary victory over its foes it is forced to rely on the most draconian provisions of its security infrastructure.
Author: Kevin Hewison, UNC
Anyone with even a passing interest in Thailand knows that there was a military coup in September 2006. The coup was meant to end the political domination of telecommunications tycoon and former Prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who had won the two largest electoral victories in Thai history. The coup punctuated a period of political turmoil that began in 2005 and continues to this day.
Some commentators agree that this period of turmoil marks a political or cultural turning point. Read more…
Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University
The red shirt uprising in Bangkok has brought Thailand’s topsy-turvy politics to a critical juncture as brinksmanship and confrontation intensify. Since early 2009, many tens of thousands of red shirts, nominally under the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and supportive of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have agitated and mobilised against the coalition government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. After rioting in the streets and retreating in disgrace in April 2009, they regrouped and reclaimed their agenda with street protests in Bangkok in March and April 2010, calling for a dissolution of the lower house and new polls to reboot Thailand’s democratic game.
As the reds ramped up their rhetoric and street demonstrations, their demands for a dissolution of the lower house were set against the defiance and resolve of Prime Minister Abhisit and his patrons and allies. Read more…
Author: John J Brandon, The Asia Foundation
Over the past four decades, during times of political turbulence in Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has served as the nation’s unifying force.
In October 1973, King Bhumibol supported student demonstrators against violent military action. Subsequently, Thailand’s three top military leaders were forced to seek asylum in other nations. The tempestuous politics that followed – weak, unstable coalition governments, a troubled economy, and an internal communist insurgency; coupled with communist victories in Indochina – alarmed the King who then lent his weight to the return of military rule in October 1976. Read more…
Author: Nicholas Farrelly, New Mandala, ANU
In Thailand the number ‘nine’ is usually considered the most auspicious. It is associated with the reigning monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty. Spoken in Thai, it also sounds like a word for ‘progress’ (kaew). 9, 99, 999, et cetera, are regarded with special reverence: luck and good fortune are denominated in 9s.
So the year 2009 was, for that simple reason, greeted with a modest degree of optimism by many Thais. Of course, in their Buddhist calendar, it is merely 2552. Indeed, it has, in the final reckoning, proven an inauspicious time. Read more…
Guest Author: New Mandala
The Thai armed forces have been major players in Thai politics since the 1932 coup which ended the absolute monarchy.
During the 1990s, some suggested that Thai soldiers were increasingly being by-passed by new societal forces, thus making the armed forces less relevant political players. Read more…
Author: Nicholas Farrelly, New Mandala
It is fair to say that Thailand’s Songkran festival—marking the traditional New Year— usually passes with a predictable mix of nation-wide chaos. Water fights, booze and huge crowds make for a heady and sometimes lethal combination, particularly on Thailand’s roads. It is a week of great frivolity and sadly for those caught up in the traffic carnage it is also a time of immense personal tragedy. In a normal year, Songkran is a mixed blessing: both happy and sad.
Songkran in 2009, which is celebrated today, 13 April, is far from normal. The government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had planned for a successful East Asia Summit to coincide with the traditional New Year festivities. In the Theravada Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia the annual celebration in mid-April is often called the ‘water festival’. It is a boon to tourist marketers everywhere. When Abhisit took power in December 2008, Songkran would have looked attractive as a time to host a peaceful, positive and popular get-together of ASEAN and friends.
The events of Saturday, 11 April, were not what he had in mind. The East Asia Summit venue was stormed by red-shirted anti-government protestors backed by his nemesis, deposed former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Responding to these unprecedented and humiliating events necessitated calling off the Summit. Delegations from across Asia were helicoptered out of the venue and sent home. From the Australian end, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plane was turned around two hours out of Bangkok. In a country as ‘face’ conscious as Thailand, Prime Minister Abhisit suffered the indignity of seeing his big weekend on the global stage spoiled by a few thousand committed opponents. They literally pushed his inadequate police cordons out of the way.