The portions of Thailand’s new written constitution that are emerging on the Internet in English present a charter designed to make sure that any election, should there be one anytime soon, will be strictly controlled by the military and the royalty in Bangkok, and that the franchise will effectively be denied to many voters.
What it seems to mean, as widely expected, is that Thailand’s latest experiment with democracy is over, with pre-ordained debate that began Monday on the new document in the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order. Liberalization began in 1997 with a reform constitution that led to the elevation in 2001 of billionaire telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra to the premiership and ended with the coup that deposed his sister Yingluck as prime minister last May. It remains to be seen how permanent that is.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a radical socialist opponent of the junta who is in exile in the UK, called the new document “possibly the worst constitution that has ever been drafted in Thailand. It should be opposed.”
Thaksin’s ascendancy in 2001 resulted in the implementation of a wide range of social policies including health care, low-cost loans and community enterprise incubators to benefit the rural poor and the classless in the urban areas that made him wildly popular – while he also grew increasingly autocratic and his administration was regarded as increasingly corrupt. Those social policies ensured his reelection until he was ousted in a 2006 coup and eventually was forced to flee the country ahead of corruption charges. Nonetheless, surrogate governments enabled him to run the country from exile. Full story...
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What it seems to mean, as widely expected, is that Thailand’s latest experiment with democracy is over, with pre-ordained debate that began Monday on the new document in the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order. Liberalization began in 1997 with a reform constitution that led to the elevation in 2001 of billionaire telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra to the premiership and ended with the coup that deposed his sister Yingluck as prime minister last May. It remains to be seen how permanent that is.
Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a radical socialist opponent of the junta who is in exile in the UK, called the new document “possibly the worst constitution that has ever been drafted in Thailand. It should be opposed.”
Thaksin’s ascendancy in 2001 resulted in the implementation of a wide range of social policies including health care, low-cost loans and community enterprise incubators to benefit the rural poor and the classless in the urban areas that made him wildly popular – while he also grew increasingly autocratic and his administration was regarded as increasingly corrupt. Those social policies ensured his reelection until he was ousted in a 2006 coup and eventually was forced to flee the country ahead of corruption charges. Nonetheless, surrogate governments enabled him to run the country from exile. Full story...
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