Al Jazeera English ran a story on Sunday featuring Yingluck in northeastern Thailand’s Khon Kaen province.
The video is embedded below and on YouTube here.
Category: Thai politics
The AP reported yesterday that:
Thailand’s prime minister on Sunday defended his country’s decision to quit the U.N.’s World Heritage Convention, saying its committee’s consideration of a Cambodian plan to manage a protected temple on Thailand’s border would increase tensions.
The UNESCO Web site has this statement yesterday from the Director General, who says:
Contrary to widely circulated media reports, the World Heritage Committee did not discuss the Management Plan of the Temple of Preah Vihear nor did it request for any reports to be submitted on its state of conservation. Moreover, it needs to be clarified that UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre never pushed for a discussion of the Management Plan by the Committee.
And:
The World Heritage Committee decision was adopted unanimously after Thailand staged a walkout. The request of Thailand to adjourn the debate was not supported by any other member of the World Heritage Committee.
Meanwhile, the official MCOT news agency says:
Thailand’s withdrawal from the World Heritage Convention and World Heritage Committee (WHC) is in accordance with his Cabinet’s resolution, because ambiguity in the Cambodian draft resolution is unacceptable, said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Sunday.
Before going to the northeastern province of Ubon Ratchathani for the Democrat Party’s election campaign, Mr Abhisit said that he spoke many times on Saturday regarding this issue with the head of Thai delegates to the WHC meeting in Paris, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti, and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya.
The draft resolution proposed by Cambodia has ambiguous words which are unacceptable, therefore Thailand decided to pull out of the WHC, he said.
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WSJ on Newin
Saturday’s Wall Street Journal profiles Thailand’s Newin Chidchob, the Bhumjai Thai party, and his Buriram PEA soccer team:
Thai politician Newin Chidchob, banned from contesting the country’s July 3 election because of a past conviction for vote-buying, has found a field in which he might be more powerful: soccer.
Long known as an important provincial power broker here, the 52-year-old Mr. Newin is emerging as a potential kingmaker in Thailand’s coming election, largely through the success of his Buriram PEA soccer team, which is helping him build support for his new Bhumjai Thai, or Thai Pride, Party.
Smaller parties like Thai Pride frequently play a big role in Thai politics—especially so this year…
I can think of nothing better to share, as the week comes to a close, than this wacky GGI “news” video summarizing the upcoming Thailand election.
The item, created by Taiwan’s NMA.TV, is embedded below and on YouTube here.
No time, at the moment, to detail all the excellent bits. Just give it a watch.
NMA.TV, of course, is the company behind various mock news story recreations — such as one about Tiger Woods — that have become popular in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent years.
(Via @BKKApologist.)
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Economist on Thailand elections
An Economist story that ran yesterday says things are looking good for Puea Thai, but that it’s still unclear who will actually form the next government:
With little more than a week to go before polling day on July 3rd, it is clear that the opposition Pheu Thai (PT) party will win more seats than any other in Thailand’s 500-strong parliament. This will mark an extraordinary comeback for the unofficial leader of PT, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister ousted in a military coup in 2006 and now living in exile in Dubai as a fugitive from Thai justice. Some even predict that PT may win an outright majority, though a hung parliament looks more likely. But in Thai politics merely winning an election is not enough; whether PT gets to form a government is another matter entirely.
As promised, here are a few cell phone images I snapped at last night’s Democrat rally in front of CentralWorld mall, in the Rajaprasong area.
None of these pics are photographic masterpieces, but they should convey a sense of what the scene looked like.
The crowd, roughly mid-way back from the stage.
The crowd listening to Deputy PM Suthep.
Another pic of the crowd, with CentralWorld behind.
People assembled, seen in the background, behind the trees. Photo taken from BTS sky train walkway.
Here are some of my Tweets from the evening (1, 2, 3, and 4):
1. Dems rallying at rainy Rajaprasong. Suthep on stage showing pics and video from April 10 clashes.
2. Dems at Rajaprasong: Suthep showing map of red shirt camps and photo of shot soldiers and journos.
3. Several thousand people here. Abhisit signs, blue Democrat party flags, and lots of umbrellas. Also, snacks, of course.
4. No red shirts in sight. People packed into area under cover in front of CTW. Old portion of mall behind, still being repaired.
For more, here’s an AP story about the gathering; it says:
Thailand’s prime minister rallied thousands of campaign supporters Thursday at the scene of last year’s deadly anti-government protests, defending his crackdown on demonstrators there as the best he could do under difficult circumstances.
Read the whole thing.
And here’s a Bangkok Post story about the rally, as well as an essay from The Nation‘s Pravit Rojanaphruk.
As I mentioned earlier, Thai interim Prime Minister Abhisit and the Democrats plan to rally today at Rajaprasong intersection.
The Bangkok Post says the PM plans to unveil “new details” about last year’s violence:
At their campaign rally in the Ratchaprasong area today Democrats plan to release new details on who may have killed 92 people during the political unrest in April and May last year, say party executives.
Earlier, the Nation said the party is:
ready to face the consequences of its plan to rally at Ratchaprasong and express its views on the bloody military crackdown last year…
MCOT notes that Puea Thai says its red shirt supporters should steer clear of the gathering:
The Pheu Thai Party on Wednesday issued a statement asking its members and supporters to stay away from the Democrat Party rally at Ratchaprasong, citing concerns over possible disturbances by third parties.
I plan to attend the rally this evening and will be Tweeting (@newley) photos and observations.
More soon…
Channel News Asia reports from Chiang Mai that:
Thailand’s fractious politics have largely been an all-male affair, but with more women contesting seats in the kingdom’s July 3 election, Thais are facing the prospect of a female prime minister for the first time in their history.
The TV report is embedded below, and can also be accessed by clicking the video on the right side of this page.
UPDATE: I encountered some technical difficulties with the embed code, so I have removed it.
That’s the question Joshua Kurlantzick asks on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia Unbound blog. The post begins:
In the run up to Thailand’s national elections on July 3, most U.S. officials have said very little about the country and its poll…
And continues:
Unlike in 2006, the U.S. cannot this time even tacitly tolerate a coup, since the Thai military already has shown, in 2006 and 2007, that a coup will only set back the country’s economy and democratic progress badly…
And adds:
What’s more, the administration should be prepared to warn Puea Thai, as well, if it wins the election and immediately tries to use a mandate to launch its own cycle of recriminations against the judges, bureaucrats, and army officers it believes have made life tough for Thaksin supporters over the past five years…
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AP story on Yingluck
The AP says in a story today that “in the space of just a few weeks,” Yingluck “has catapulted to near rock star status on Thailand’s political stage, becoming the opposition’s main contender in the vote.”
The piece includes this snippet from the campaign trail in northeastern Thailand:
Holding the election was a key demand last year of the so-called Red Shirt protesters, tens of thousands of whom poured into Bangkok from the provinces and shut down parts of it by camping out downtown for two months.
One of them, civil servant Nutwara Autehaloek, said during one of Yingluck’s speeches in Trakarn Pheutphon that “if history repeats itself” — if the opposition legally wins but is prevented from governing — “we will return to Bangkok in greater numbers than before.”