Newley Purnell
A Wall Street Journal story today:
Thai Prime Minister to Call Election
BANGKOK—Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said he plans to dissolve the House of Representatives by Friday and call what he described as a landmark election for the Southeast Asian country, which has been plagued by deep and sometimes deadly political divisions.
The piece also includes a ten minute interview with Abhisit, embedded below:
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Just briefly, following the story I pointed out yesterday, here’s more from the Wall Street Journal. This is an editorial today on the ongoing Thailand-Cambodia clashes and Thai domestic politics:
Fighting over the disputed territory surrounding the Preah Vihear Temple along the Thai-Cambodia border resumed last Friday, with both sides trading artillery fire and accusations of targeting civilian villages throughout the weekend. The Associated Press reports 12 soldiers confirmed dead.
The world may never know which side started the latest clash, since Thailand continues to resist allowing international observers to monitor the area. And both countries deserve some blame for stirring the pot at various times. Nevertheless, it has become increasingly clear that the Thai military is doing nothing to ease the tension.
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Two Thailand-related stories that I was too busy to post on Fri., but which I wanted to point out:
WSJ: “Long Shot: The New Asean Basketball League Tries to Win Over the Thais.”
Sports has always had its share of lovable long shots, plucky underdogs that fans pull for despite the odds, or even because of them. Now there’s the Thailand Tigers — one of six franchises of the Asean Basketball League, currently in the final weeks of its inaugural season. (The other five teams are the Philippine Patriots, the Singapore Slingers, the Satria Muda BritAma — from North Jakarta — the Kuala Lumpur Dragons and the opponent on this Sunday afternoon last month, the Brunei Barracudas.)
The league is backed by the big money and marketing savvy of founder Tony Fernandes, chief executive of budget carrier Air Asia, but it’s clear that the Tigers’ attempt to create a mass fan base is going to be no slam dunk.
“After all, this is the first entirely professional sports franchise in the history of Thailand,” proudly declares the Tigers’ 47-year-old owner, Wim Reijnen, adding that even the Thai soccer league has been semipro — that is, with rosters that mix pros and amateurs. He doesn’t care to divulge, though, just how much his players are paid.
A basketball aficionado since fellow Dutchman Rik Smits made it to the National Basketball Association in the U.S. in 1988, Mr. Reijnen says he’s long wanted to turn his performer-management experience to the realm of sports. In addition to picking the team name and colors and hiring and firing his first coach, he’s learned to cheer from the team bench “just like Mark Cuban” — the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, who is known for his outrageous behavior and emotional outbursts.
(I love a good Rik Smits reference.)
I also enjoyed this:
“It’s hard to find any basketball courts in the Thai countryside,” says American Ben Tamte, a hoops aficionado who teaches in Thailand.
And this:
“Still, Tigers’ owner Mr. Reijnen remains optimistic about the league and his underdog effort. “With more youth-development projects, basketball can only grow,” he says. “I think the nonstop action of an indoor sport where you sit in air-conditioning appeals to the people here. And now every young player in the country has a goal to shoot for” — in becoming a professional basketball player.
(Related satirical Onion story about Thai sports: “Just give me the damn sepak takraw ball.” Insert joke about Mae Hong Son Water Lillies here.)
In other news, the WSJ this story: “Thailand drops charges in weapons case“:
Thai officials dropped charges against the crew of a plane filled with illegal North Korean weapons detained in December at Bangkok’s international airport.
Prosecutors said they were responding to requests by the five crew members’ home countries, Belarus and Kazakhstan, to hand the cases over to potentially be tried in their own courts. Thai authorities said the men should be released soon, pending completion of procedural requirements, then deported.
Although rumored for days, the announcement surprised some weapons experts, who are puzzling over unanswered questions from the case and were hoping Thai authorities would hold the men longer, or at least until more details about the investigation were revealed. Thai officials have indicated the flight was headed for Iran, but it remains unclear who masterminded the arms purchase or where the arms were ultimately going to be used.
(My previous posts on the issue are here.)
(All emphasis mine.)
(Image source: WSJ.)
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Lots of good Economist and WSJ stuff to link to, and so little time. But here goes:
To see how Iran’s foreign policy works in smaller, ideologically sympathetic Latin American countries, take Ecuador—a country that has such dire problems raising money after defaulting on its debt that it can easily be swayed by cash from foreign governments. Ecuador is thinking of joining Nicaragua and Venezuela in recognising the independence of the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the hope of getting Russian government loans.
This month an Iranian delegation was in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, to discuss loans for hydroelectric power plants, one of the 25 bilateral agreements signed when Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, visited Iran last year. Ecuador badly needs the plants: it was forced to start rationing power this month.
More soon. Don’t think the draw for World Cup 2010 has escaped my attention…
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WSJ: “Myanmar’s Neighbors Advance Pipeline Project”
HSIPAW, Myanmar — China and its neighbors are moving ahead on a multibillion-dollar oil-and-gas pipeline project that promises to greatly enhance the financial strength of Myanmar’s military regime and boost its political clout in Asia.
That promise comes as the U.S. is seeking new ways to weaken Myanmar’s regime, which has used force and imprisonment to subdue political opposition and ethnic separatists over the years, and which some analysts fear could someday pose a threat to other countries as it builds up its military. Past strategies, including the use of economic sanctions to hobble Myanmar’s junta, have largely failed.
And:
When completed, the pipeline will help unlock large untapped deposits of natural gas off Myanmar’s coast and carry it hundreds of miles to southern China, expanding Myanmar’s role as one of Asia’s important energy exporters and enhancing its influence over other countries that rely on its supplies.
(Emphasis mine.)
There’s also a video and some graphics that are worth checking out.
UPDATE: This story appears to be available to non-WSJ subscribers via Google News, but the link I provided above seems to be subscriber-only.
UPDATE 2: I meant to mention this earlier, but U.S. Senator Jim Webb, who met with Aung San Suu Kyi in August, has often warned of China’s growing influence in Myanmar. News of this pipeline project would obviously be a case in point.
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Fliers nostalgic for the golden era of air travel might want to book a trip to Anthony Toth’s garage.
Mr. Toth has built a precise replica of a first-class cabin from a Pan Am World Airways 747 in the garage of his two-bedroom condo in Redondo Beach, Calif. The setup includes almost everything fliers in the late 1970s and 1980s would have found onboard: pairs of red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead luggage bins and a curved, red-carpeted staircase.
Once comfortably ensconced, Mr. Toth’s visitors can sip beverages from the long-defunct airline’s glasses, served with Pan Am logo swizzle sticks and napkins, plus salted almonds sealed in Pan Am wrappers. They can even peel open a set of plastic-wrapped, vintage Pan Am headphones and listen to original in-flight audio recordings from the era, piped in through the armrests.
Mr. Toth, a 42-year-old global sales director at United Airlines, has spent more than 20 years on his elaborate recreation of a Pan Am cabin, which includes a few economy-class seats, too. All told, Mr. Toth estimates he has spent as much as $50,000 on the project, which he hopes someday to turn into a museum.
(Emphasis mine.)
What a story. And don’t miss the slide show.
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Interesting sight this morning: All three of the newspapers we receive featured front page images of yesterday’s remarkable dust storm in Australia.
An AP story about the storm is here, Wikipedia has some info here, and you can find more images from the always-excellent Big Picture photo blog here.
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WSJ: “Thai Protest Group Votes to Form a Political Party”
PATHUM THANI, Thailand — Members of Thailand’s yellow-shirt protest movement voted to form a political party, creating a potentially influential force as the country struggles to pull itself out of recession.
Tens of thousands of members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy — a movement instrumental in bringing down two governments — converged on a sports stadium in this town near Bangkok on Monday and voted to transform the grass-roots campaign against corruption into a formal political party.
The apparently overwhelming assent — almost the entire stadium stood up to vote for the change — points to an expanded political role for the group’s leaders after it gained global notoriety for shutting down Bangkok’s international airports for a week last year.
The new party, which the PAD hasn’t yet named, could further elevate publisher and broadcaster Sondhi Limthongkul, the 61-year-old driving force behind the movement.
The PAD’s vote comes as Thailand grapples with its worst economic slump in more than a decade. The state economic planning agency said GDP contracted 7.1% in the first three months of 2009 from a year earlier, the worst performance since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
Also in today’s WSJ: “Thai Economy Enters Recession, but Recovery Is in Sight.”
Thailand’s economy plunged into recession in the first quarter as the global downturn hammered exports and tourism slumped due to political unrest. But the government and economists say the economy is probably at or near the bottom.
Seasonally adjusted gross domestic product shrank 1.9% in the three months ended March from the prior quarter, said the head of the National Economic & Social Development Board, Ampon Kittiampon. The state economic planning agency said GDP contracted 7.1% in the first three months from a year earlier, the worst performance since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
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Here’s a story in today’s WSJ: “Thai Protests Build on Economic Crisis”
BANGKOK — Tens of thousands of antigovernment protesters sang and danced through the weekend outside Thailand’s main government complex, cheering on ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra and offering the nation’s new leaders — and others in Asia — a jarring reminder of the political risks accompanying the region’s sharp economic decline.
Local businesswoman Darunee Kritboonyalai, a founding shareholder of a Thai iced-tea brand and an active supporter of Mr. Thaksin, said the protests against Thailand’s government could grow as the economy worsens. “We’re just part of a global situation, true. But this government doesn’t know how to handle it properly,” she said.
The protesters are mainly seeking to restore Mr. Thaksin — a multimillionaire businessman who was removed from office in a military coup nearly three years ago — to power. They object to the way Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva came to power and are disenchanted with how he is handling the country’s economic downturn, and so are hoping to fuel wider discontent.
Many of the 30,000-strong crowd mocked the government’s latest stimulus efforts as, at best, an imitation of policies Mr. Thaksin championed before he was ousted in 2006. Some protesters handed 2,000 baht ($56) cash handouts from the government to rally organizers instead of spending them in Bangkok’s stores, as the government intended. One elderly woman, Ananya Mhanpadungkit, climbed onto a makeshift stage to say she couldn’t accept money from what she described as an “illegitimate” government. Protest leaders said they would continue their nighttime rallies indefinitely.
Thailand’s lingering conflict between Mr. Thaksin’s populist supporters and its more conservative, military-backed government shows how the world’s economic slump is complicating a series of political battles across Southeast Asia. The region is especially dependent on trade, providing electronic components, raw materials and skilled labor for the global supply chain, and several countries are feeling the strain.
There’s also insight into how economic woes in Malaysia and the Philippines are affecting politics there.
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WSJ: “New Thai Prime Minister Faces Immediate Hurdles”
Ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra’s grip on Thai politics — and the instability it provoked — eased on Monday with parliament’s election of a new prime minister from a rival party.
The rise of 44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Oxford-educated leader of the Democrat Party, could bring some calm after months of sometimes-violent protests that have undermined one of Southeast Asia’s linchpin economies.
But Mr. Abhisit faces significant political and economic hurdles. His new ruling coalition’s slim majority depends on the support of defectors he lured from Mr. Thaksin’s camp, which still controls the single largest party in parliament. Grass-roots support for Mr. Thaksin and his populist policies runs deep in rural Thailand, and Mr. Abhisit’s election was greeted by public protests by Thaksin supporters.
Mr. Abhisit will also have to deal with the effects of the global economic slowdown on Thailand, which some economists predict could slip into recession next year.
And another snip:
Political risk is likely to remain a watchword for Thailand in the coming months. Mr. Abhisit’s narrow margin of victory in Monday’s parliamentary vote — he defeated pro-Thaksin rival Pracha Promnok by 235 votes to 198 — could make it tough for him to act decisively on the economy, or even to defend his legislative majority. Thailand’s next national election must be held by 2011.
There’s also an interactive graphic that charts Thailand’s GDP growth rate and the country’s political unrest.
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