Category: Thai politics

Categories
Thai politics Thailand

Thailand election: and we’re off

Voting in Thailand’s first national election since 2007 kicked off this morning.

The New York Times describes the vote this way:

Thais were voting Sunday in a hotly contested election that will open the next stage in the country’s long-running power struggle between the fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the entrenched political and social establishment that supported a coup that drove him from office more than five years ago.

Meanwhile, here’s an overview of the voting from Al Jazeera English. Video embedded below and available on YouTube.

Elsewhere, Reuters relates a lighthearted moment:

A Thai television presenter asked Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva if this would be the last time he would be interviewing him as prime minister.

Abhisit replied: “Why? Are you quitting journalism?”

It was a brave show of confidence ahead of Sunday’s election by the urbane, Oxford-educated economist who also goes under the birth name of “Mark.”

As a reminder, here’s my roundup of resources for following the election online.

For timely tidbits, I suggest my Bangkok journalists and media-types Twitter list, as well as my general Thailand Twitter list.

Stay tuned…

Categories
Thai politics

Thailand election: By the numbers

Here’s a graphic, via Thailand’s Election Commission, that the Bangkok Post ran with a Thitinan Pongsudhirak column yesterday. The piece begins:

No one haunts and hovers over Thailand’s political landscape like Thaksin Shinawatra.

2011 07 02 thai elex

Image: Bangkok Post.

Categories
Thai politics

Today’s Nation front page…

…features a unique design:

2011 07 02 nation

And here it is, rotated 180 degrees:

2011 07 02 nation2

Images via @lekasina on yfrog.

Categories
HOWTO Thai politics Thailand

Thailand elections: how to follow the news online

On Sunday, Thais will vote in a national election for the first time since 2007. Here are some resources for following the events online.

Twitter

Local media

Thailand’s two most prominent English language newspapers will be providing coverage, naturally:

Thailand-focused blogs

Some good resources include:

Background info

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.

Categories
Thai politics

NYT on political views in Thailand’s northeastern countryside

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.

Categories
Thai politics

Yingluck, the army, and a “grand bargain”?

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.

Categories
Thai politics

Sonthi the candidate, Thailand’s military, and the upcoming election

A video report from Al Jazeera English notes that “Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the Thai military man who overthrew former Prime minister Thaksin Shinawat, is one of the candidates running in the country’s general election on Sunday.”

The report is embedded below and on YouTube here.

Categories
Thai politics

Thitinan Pongsudhirak on what comes after the election

As ever, thoughtful analysis from political expert Thitinan Pongsudhirak, who says in Saturday’s Bangkok Post that post-election, a “flexible roadmap acceptable to the principal protagonists is imperative.”

Read the whole thing.

Categories
Thai politics

BBC interviews with Abhisit and Thaksin

The BBC on Sunday posted a text story about the upcoming election. Of particular interest are the embedded video interviews with Abhisit and Thaksin. Worth a watch.

As I noted following Abhisit’s address to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club here in Bangkok in March, he is a skillful politician.

Some analysts say he cannot connect with common people. But on “Hard Talk,” in the featured video, he was characteristically poised and on-message, and this surely must resound with an international audience. Just a thought.

Categories
Thai politics

TIME on upcoming Thailand elections

A recent TIME story on the upcoming elections begins with a memorable lede:

Sonthi Boonyaratglin must have armor-plated gonads. How else to explain it? Five years ago, as an army general, he led a military coup that overthrew Thailand’s then Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Now retired and running in the country’s July 3 parliamentary election, he presents the coup as a brave and selfless act. “I’m glad we did it,” says Sonthi, who commands his Matubhum Party from a spartan Bangkok office. “If we hadn’t, Thailand might no longer be a democracy.”

(Emphasis mine.)