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Month: July 2011
On Sunday, Thais will vote in a national election for the first time since 2007. Here are some resources for following the events online.
- I maintain a list of Bangkok journalists and media-types on Twitter. It’s currently at 47 feeds.
- I also maintain a general Thailand Twitter list. It’s got 285 accounts.
- I’ll be Tweeting, of course: @newley.
- The hashtag for the vote appears to be #ThaiElection.
Local media
Thailand’s two most prominent English language newspapers will be providing coverage, naturally:
Thailand-focused blogs
Some good resources include:
Background info
- There’s a Wikipedia page for the elections.
- The Asia Foundation has a Thailand Election Primer
Google News
- And of course, a Google News search for “Thailand election” will return plenty of material.
Update: July 2, 2011 — corrected link to Asia Foundation’s primer.
The NYT/IHT has an in-depth story describing how life — and political views — have changed in the Thai countryside over the last 50 years:
As campaigning for the national election Sunday entered its final days, there was broad consensus that rural votes would be crucial in deciding the outcome. But no one is quite sure what rural means anymore.
The piece covers a lot of ground, but one element that may be of particular interest is the description of villagers’ international experiences:
Villagers here complain of slow Internet download speeds. On a single street that winds past rice paddies, residents tell of work stints in Taiwan, Singapore, Israel and Saudi Arabia, enough frequent-flier miles to rival the inhabitants of a tony Bangkok condominium.
And later:
Every family has someone who has gone to work in Bangkok or abroad, says Nirand Nammontri, the owner of a grocery store in Baan Nong Tun who built her house with money that her husband made working at a printing factory in Taiwan.
The Wall Street Journal points out that:
With Ms. Yingluck leading opinion polls, analysts said the key question is whether Thailand’s conservative armed forces will accept an outcome that places the youngest sister of exiled populist billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra—a former prime minister whom the army ousted in a coup five years ago—in Thailand’s top job.
And there’s this, later in the piece:
“Mr. Thaksin is pursuing a dual strategy,” Marc Saxer, Bangkok-based director of Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation wrote in a research paper this week. “Puea Thai is supposed to collect the necessary political capital with a victory in the elections, with a view to prepare a ‘Grand Bargain’ with the traditional elites afterwards.”
The idea that Thaksin and members of the Thai establishment have reached a compromise about what happens after the election — assuming Puea Thai wins and is able to form a government — has been much discussed here in Bangkok in recent days.
Today’s Bangkok Post says:
Pheu Thai party list MP Wattana Muangsuk has dismissed a news report that he struck a deal with Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwon to allow the party to form the next government without fear of opposition from the military.
And elsewhere, Wassana Nanuam, who covers the military, writes:
So, it came as no surprise when a news report emerged that Thaksin had sent Wattana Muangsuk, a former commerce minister in the Thaksin administration, to meet with Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwon in Brunei in February.
(All emphasis mine.)
Stay tuned.
By the way, a programming note: I will continue blogging — and posting to Twitter — through Sunday’s election.
Future posts will cover news as it emerges, as well as a summary of resources for following the vote online.
In the meantime, Thailand watchers: What do you think about the state of play? Email me: newley AT gmail DOT COM to share your thoughts.