New Mandala

On 6 October 2009, the latest attempt to create a “real” political party in Thailand took a further step with the first general meeting of the New Politics Party (NPP), the formal political arm of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), at the Thunderdome in Mueang Thong Thani. The main purpose of this assembly of [...]

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For the past 12 days I’ve been out of email and internet contact. A very pleasant break! Today I’ve been trying to catch up on some of the stories coming of Thailand. I’ll be posting on some of them over the next few days.
First, the by-elections.
From my quick analysis there are two main messages coming [...]

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With the assistance of a military coup, two party dissolutions, a new constitution, an activist judiciary, royal backing, an ultra-nationalist crisis, six months of escalating street provocation, military insubordination, and an economically disastrous airport shutdown, the Democrat Party now seems to be within striking distance of forming Thailand’s next government.
Good luck to them.
Their path to [...]

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With Thailand’s parliamentary horse-trading picking up momentum, and with increasing talk of an improbable Democrat government, the results of the January by-elections are looking more and more important.
Thanks to master number cruncher Chris Baker, here are some interesting figures on results from December 2007 in the by-election constituencies.
Some words of explanation. The “members” column lists the number of MPs elected from [...]

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Here is a list of the banned constituency MPs and their constituencies. The number after the province refers to the constituency number within the province. In my post yesterday I referred to 29 parliamentary seats, but there are only 28 in this list. I’m not sure which figure is correct. Can anyone help out? Also, [...]

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The Election Commission of Thailand has indicated that constituency by-elections for banned MPs will go ahead on 11 January 2009 (the same day as the election for the Bangkok Governor).  There will be 29 parliamentary seats to fill, in 26 constituencies in 22 different provinces. Of course there is no guarantee that these by-elections will go [...]

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Events in Thailand this week have concentrated minds on the possibility of a coup, once again, unseating a democratically-elected government.  With the sieges of Suvarnaphumi and Don Muang airports continuing, the judiciary readying its claws to dismember the institutional basis of the government, and the Prime Minister dashing around the country unable to use his [...]

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In a democratic system everyone has the right to protest. Rallies, marches, sit-ins and blockades are an integral part of an open and vibrant public space. Demonstrations give people an opportunity to air grievances and to publicly signal the depth of their support. And they furnish the media with potent images of dissent.
The ongoing rally of the [...]

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Earlier this year, I published a paper examining Thailand’s “rural consitution” (walker-2008.pdf). The paper documented the local political values that inform electoral decision making in a rural district of Chiang Mai province. It was a deliberate attempt to counter the commonly expressed view that electoral support for Thaksin was illegitimate because it was based on the financial mobilisation of gullible and [...]

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Thailand is now witnessing a new spate of interest in non-electoral forms of political representation. Last week Bangkok Pundit provided a brief, but important, post on the PA(S)D’s proposal for “sufficiency democracy”. It is a proposal for 30 percent of parliamentary representatives to be elected and 70 percent to be appointed. Those making the appointments [...]

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