Two Wasted Decades in Thai Politics

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phuketrichard
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Two Wasted Decades in Thai Politics

Post by phuketrichard »

interesting read:
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Now that Thaksin Shinawatra appears actively back in Thai politics, it is demoralizing to look back at Thailand’s wasted time and opportunities. Once a promising country on the way from democratic transition to consolidation in the late 1990s, Thailand has become semi-autocratic, and its rocky political trajectory over the past two decades is now structural. The traditional institutions of power that grew out of the Cold War called the shots in earlier decades and are just unwilling to let the country move forward in the immediate years ahead.

Thailand’s ongoing decline began when Thaksin and his political party machine posed a challenge to the old order in the early 2000s by directly engaging the rural masses. When his Thai Rak Thai Party won the 2001 election by a near-majority, the ruling elites gave him a chance because he pledged economic recovery from the 1997-98 economic crisis, resulting in unprecedented policy innovations from universal healthcare, rural microcredit, cluster development projects, niche industrial policies in food, fashion, tourism, healthcare, and automobiles. When he won re-election by a massive landslide in February 2005, Thaksin’s meteoric popularity rivaled the top echelons of the establishment. Yellow-clad street protests against Thaksin from August 2005 led to the September 2006 military coup.
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.....Many young Thais who came of age during the Thaksin years and the two coups saw that their future was being lost and lined up behind the newly formed Future Forward Party, calling for reforms of the military, monarchy and other traditional institutions. Future Forward was duly dissolved in February 2020, sparking protests among young Thais, which were suppressed. The May 2023 election witnessed Future Forward’s successor, Move Forward, spectacularly winning and beating Thaksin’s Pheu Thai. Yet Move Forward was similarly disbanded in August 2024.

The recurrent pattern of military coups and judicial dissolutions indicates that the old guard behind traditional institutions will not give up power without a fight. In fact, since October 2016, the old guard has been increasingly assertive and interventionist. But the tide of history is against them as younger voices and cross-generational and nationwide sentiments for change, reform, and modernization appear inexorable, kept down for now by draconian legal measures and constitutional means. This is why tension and confrontation will underpin the Thai political scene in the medium and longer-term until this chasm between the old guard and the “new gen” is resolved.
read the full story:
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest ... itics.html
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
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sigmoid
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Re: Two Wasted Decades in Thai Politics

Post by sigmoid »

Getting ready for the third one...

It's so hard to believe Mr. T is still around. I remember how optimistic everyone was when he became PM. "He's already rich, so no corruption. He's a successful businessman, so he can fix the post-1997 Tom Yum Kung financial crisis economy."

This was after Banharn and Chavalit made things worse and the bubble burst. Of course, the Democrats helped screw things up as well both before and after the crash. Everyone was looking for a savior at that point.

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