Good on 'em. I hope they can build something better for Thailand, it deserves more than to be ruled by a men with guns and the rich pulling their strings.
I’m in Chiang Mai right now and there’s a lot of interest and excitement about the election. Looks to be a big turnout as well as people were voting early from some of the University voting sites, and today in all of the neighborhoods there are local polling stations that seem quite busy. I think everyone’s looking forward to The result of this election, and hoping for a more youthful and Progressive government. From what little I understand, the military still has a partial stranglehold on the parliamentary seats and so even with a youth movement in the government the military still may have a strong hand in governing. It’s definitely going to be interesting this week.
"The Pheu Thai Party and the liberal (youth led) Move Forward party surged ahead with more than 90% of the votes counted, but are far from certain to lead the next government, with parliamentary rules written by the military after its 2014 coup skewed in its favour.
To rule, the opposition parties will need to strike deals, including with members of a junta-appointed Senate that sided with military parties and gets to vote on who becomes prime minister and form a government."
67 deficit- people the ultimate arbitrator:
“Asked whether Move Forward worried that senators would not vote in support of the coalition to meet the required 376 votes of endorsement for prime minister, Mr Pita said he was not concerned about it. The party had a mandate from the people.”
I’m watching this morning this quite interesting program that discusses the Thailand economy, politics, as well as the importance of the progressive youth movement in Thailand.
If they don’t sack all the old generals and completely restructure the military, the same problems will keep coming back. The military should protect a nation from invasion, not protect an elite from the people.
Number of generals planned to be reduced:
This is all really exciting. But definitely a long uphill battle to not face the government dissolving their party, prohibiting their leaders from governments, and so forth. Unfortunately I don’t see the military being sacked. Usually, what you get in situations like this where a country finally embraces change with an entrenched military in government (speaking from a Latin American experience here), is that you have sympathetic soft power military folks willing to embrace change and siding with the people. But take Brazil, it took their military 30 years since the end of the military regime to admit to human rights violations and wrongdoings when they were in power. Today’s Brazilian military is the same one that was in power then. It isn’t hopeless… military institutions have been known to have power shifts from within that then sided with people’s reforms (like what happened throughout Latin American in the 80s). Just saying, militaries don’t usually dissolve…
The negotiated outcome will prove there is a difference between a Buddhist country and others. In the recent ousting of the government in Sri Lanka, there was more restraint than would be seen in other countries.