Over the past two weeks, Thailand, and the international Thai studies community, has seen several unprecedented open debates about Thailand’s monarchy and its future course. On Thai PBS, which is generally acknowledged to be the best television channel in Thailand, an interview program held over the past two weeks a series of relatively forthright discussions, with both royalists and critics of the current monarchical system, on the future of the institution. The conversations were thorough (as thorough as they could be in Thailand) and thought-provoking. Read more »

On Sunday, Bangkokians turned out in record-breaking numbers to cast their votes in the city’s gubernatorial election—the first such contest since the violent red-shirt protests that engulfed the capital in the spring of 2010. The incumbent MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra of the Democrat Party was elected for a second term with 1.25 million votes. Equally notable was the fact that, for the first time, a runner-up—in this case, Pongsapat Pongcharoen of the Peau Thai party—received more than one million votes. As Bangkok Pundit notes, the mere 178,000 votes that separated the candidates marked the narrowest margin in the history of Bangkok elections. Read more »

This past week, Thailand’s government made the surprising announcement that it would launch talks with the insurgent organization National Revolution Front (BRN) in the south, with the discussions focused on achieving peace in the south. This marked the first time Bangkok had opened talks with any insurgent organization in the south since the violence flared up again more than a decade ago. Previously, many Thai leaders had insisted that even opening formal talks with an insurgent organization would be providing the insurgents with the kind of status they did not deserve, and possibly would open the door to significant autonomy for the three southern provinces. Read more »

In all the recent news about the southern Thailand insurgency—a failed attack by insurgents on a marine base in the south, and a string of attacks in recent days that included at least fifty bombings and shootings—there has not been enough attention paid to the motivations of some of the insurgents killed in the last week. In the Bangkok Post, Veera Prateepchaikul alludes to the problem: Several of the insurgents killed by Thai forces in the marine attack had been present at a protest in 2004 at Tak Bai at which at least seventy-eight protestors were stuffed into hot, airless trucks and ultimately suffocated to death. Read more »

Over the past year, as conflict has flared in Rakhine State in Myanmar, growing numbers of Rohingya have fled their homes. It remains unclear to me—even after a trip to Rakhine State—exactly why the conflict started now, and what role the local security forces have played, if any.  However, it is abundantly clear that the region’s management of Rohingya outflows is horrendous, a failure pointed out by the increasing numbers of Rohingya who are fleeing by boat, rather than going to camps in Myanmar or Bangladesh. Read more »

Over the past week, since the sentencing of a prominent Thai editor Somyot Prueksakakasemsuk and activist to ten years (eleven if you count the suspended sentence he must serve again) in jail for publishing articles that supposedly violated Thailand’s broad and outdated lèse majesté law, both Thai and foreign commentators have hotly debated whether, and how, to alter or abolish the law. On New Mandala, there is a lively discussion of whether the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand—which itself has been hit with lèse majesté charges—is too weak in defending the rights of free speech in Thailand. Read more »

Yesterday the prominent Thai editor and activist Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was sentenced to ten years in jail for publishing articles allegedly offensive to the Thai monarchy, under the draconian lèse majesté laws Thailand has in force. Bangkok-based blogger Saksith Saiyasombut has a fine overview of the scene in the courtroom as the judges read out their verdict, to the protests of several hundred observers, including other rights activists. Read more »

Mr. President, as you start your second term, you have made clear that you will continue the “pivot” to Asia, which includes moving military assets to the Asian theater, bolstering relations with Asian partners, and generally re-establishing the United States as the major Pacific presence. Your new secretary of state, John Kerry, is a longtime advocate of closer ties with mainland Southeast Asia. Within the State Department and Pacific Command, support for the “pivot” is strong as well. Read more »

Over on Bangkok Pundit, a translation of an op-ed recently published in the Thai publication Matichon offers some revealing quotes from Senator Somjate Boonthanom, the former general who helped lead the 2006 coup that toppled the government of Thaksin Shinawatra. “The elected ones like to refer to the election process as being democracy,” explained Somajate, “From elections, the people choose, but still corruption. Therefore, it is not proof that coming from elections is the best. Democracy that steals from the nation, I view it as worse than a military dictatorship.”

Of course, such statements are of little surprise from an appointed Senator whose power, as Bangkok Pundit notes, was not derived from the ballot box, but from a coup against an elected government. But General Somjate is far from alone in his sentiments. Read more »

Last month, protestors representing the royalist Pitak Siam group gathered in rally sites across Bangkok to force the ouster of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, accusing her government of acting as a puppet for her fugitive brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. While the number of protesters that ultimately turned out—some 20,000— paled in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of people who came out in 2006 for anti-Thaksin rallies, the protest is nonetheless another troubling development in the political meltdown that has engulfed the country in recent years. Since 2006, Thailand, once a poster child for democratization in the developing world, has undergone a rapid democratic regression. And it is hardly alone. Read more »