Analysis: Sunday’s Thai election marked a rare moment in global politics when a suppressed protest movement found vengeance at the ballot box.
: “Pita has pledged to move Thailand out of what he calls a ‘lost decade’ of slow economic growth. Part of that plan, he says, includes diversifying Thailand’s tourism-dependent economy and spreading it out beyond the capital, Bangkok.
“He has said he would end military conscription — which he told Bloomberg News would help the economy — and has pushed for an end to Thailand’s lèse-majesté law, which criminalizes speaking poorly of the monarchy. Rights groups and critics say that such laws have been used by the country’s conservative establishment to target and persecute political opponents.”An entrenched political order now shows signs of crumbling.
“Thailand is the only upper-middle income country that regularly has coups,” Joshua Kurlantzick, of the Council on Foreign Relations, . “Young Thais are tired of the economy and politics being stuck in this archaic past, run by generals and kings.”That frustration saw its expression in a huge round of protests in 2020, marked by an outpouring of youth support andon the streets to evade Thailand’s draconian lèse-majesté law. The party that is essentially the predecessor of Move Forward was dissolved by Prayuth’s government — legal chicanery that only further fueled popular anger.
Some analysts suggest it may be too difficult for the generals to sweep this election result under the rug. “This time the defeat is so crushing and the ruling elite’s loss of support so devastating, it will be a very hard result to finesse, much less reject,”, director of the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan.
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