New Mandala

The launch of Nick Nostitz’s fantastic new book will be held on Wednesday 15 July (8 PM) at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. Full details are available here. The informative and entertaining Chris Baker will be there for a Q&A.
Go along and buy a copy (or two)!

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From a New Mandala reader in Bangkok:

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A stunning first-hand account from the streets of Bangkok. Incredible photos that shock, move, entertain and inform.  A superb contribution to the documentation and analysis of Thailand’s recent political history. And this is just the first volume!
Published by White Lotus Press
UPDATE: Book launch details are here.

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Since the time the People’s Alliance for Democracy started pushing its idea of “new politics,” the practical political question has been how to realize it. At the beginning, they had their protests at and around Government House and could thus impose the issue on the public agenda. However, the topic had already disappeared  some weeks [...]

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As poor Thais learn more about their rights, demand greater transparency and exhibit less tolerance for privilege-based behavior and extraconstitutional interference in government by the army and other quarters in the elite, the pressure to reconcile the needs of different sections of Thai society will increase.
That tipping point may yet be some years off. Yet [...]

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I can’t say I had given much thought to what the People’s Alliance for Democracy was going to call its new political party (previous New Mandala coverage of the party’s establishment is available here and here).  I figured it would simply be the “People’s Alliance for Democracy”.  Brand recognition, and all that.  But clearly I [...]

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On 24 May 2009, I attended the first of two days of the “People’s Alliance for Democracy Assembly” at Rangsit University. Its main purpose was to assess the political situation and prepare a decision about whether to turn the social movement, at least partially, into a political party or not.
With my registration, I received a [...]

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On 25 May 2009 the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) lavishly celebrated the decision to found their political party in the sports stadium in Thammasat’s Rangsit campus. There were marches by the various PAD chapters of the different provinces in folkish costumes, and a large show re-enacting the sanitised history of their protests of last year, [...]

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Over the past 6 weeks, Andrew and I have written two summary articles that describe some of the elements of the “royal sub-plot” that is influencing Thai politics.  Bangkok Pundit has helpfully pointed out more of the dots around Thanpuying Viraya Javakul who, you may recall, denied being behind the “assassination effort” against People’s Alliance [...]

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Commenting on Thai politics and political reform in Thailand these days is no fun, because the situation is unusually complicated, and the ideological climate has become almost suffocating. Anyway, I will make six observations that I think are pertinent to the current discussion of political reform, three each concerning structural and ideological issues.
First, if democracy [...]

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