BANGKOK – Paetongtarn Shinawatra has been elected Thailand’s next prime minister, a dramatic and unexpected shift in national leadership that consolidates the family clan’s hold on politics but won’t necessarily stabilize them.   Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor – with 319 for, 145 against and 27 abstaining – of the 37-year-old political novice and loyal […]

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BANGKOK – A Thai court has ruled Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin breached ethical standards in his appointment of a convicted felon to his Cabinet, knocking the embattled premier from power after less than a year in office and thrusting Thai politics back into relative chaos. The Constitutional Court judged Srettha’s appointment of Phichit Chuenban, jailed […]

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In a lurch backward for Thai democracy,  a court ruled today to dissolve the opposition Move Forward party for campaigning against a severe royal insult law, which the nine-judge panel ruled violated election laws and was tantamount to attempting to overthrow the constitutional monarchy. The unanimous ruling will ban the party’s top executives from politics […]

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BANGKOK – Topsy-turvy Thailand finally has a new government, a largely pre-ordained configuration built in the name of national reconciliation that nominally unites old foes while perilously pushing a potent new progressive force to the opposition sidelines. To announce the historic reset, coup-toppled and criminally convicted ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra dramatically returned to the kingdom today […]

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BANGKOK – In a largely preordained vote against the popular will, Move Forward Party (MFP) leader Pita Limjaroenrat failed on July 13 to win enough parliamentary votes to become Thailand’s next and arguably first progressive prime minister. The military-appointed, 249-member Senate and lower house parliamentarians aligned with the outgoing conservative coalition led by coup-maker General […]

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BANGKOK – Thai voters overwhelmingly selected the Move Forward and Peua Thai opposition parties at Sunday’s (May 14) highly anticipated election, a popular call for change over continuity that may or may not result in a smooth political transition after nearly a decade of military-aligned rule. Move Forward, the reincarnation of the banned Future Forward […]

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Myanmar’s military regime has doubled down on its repression of journalists as it tightens it grip on the country following its democracy-crushing coup on February 1, 2021. After arresting scores of journalists to block coverage of its abuses and resistance to the takeover, its second year in power saw the handing down of harsh prison […]

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BANGKOK – Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha will live to rule another day with a highly anticipated Constitutional Court ruling on the legality of his tenure under constitutionally mandated eight-year term limits. But the end of his strongman era is now more clearly, though not decisively, in sight. Amid tight security, opposition protests and fears […]

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BANGKOK – Thailand’s topsy-turvy politics were thrown into new disarray today with a Constitutional Court ruling to suspend Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha from his official duties until it rules on an opposition petition that argues he has already served his legal eight-year term limit. The petition asserts that Prayut’s time atop his May 2014 coup-installed […]

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BANGKOK – When Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai returned one late April evening from a high-level meeting in Anhui, China, the top Thai envoy was greeted at Bangkok’s airport by an unexpected host: Beijing’s ambassador to Thailand Han Zhiqiang. The diplomatic role reversal, where China’s envoy welcomed the kingdom’s foreign minister on Thai soil, sent […]

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MANILA – Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr is poised to become the next president of the Philippines, marking the democratic vindication of a political clan that was unceremoniously toppled in a historic “People’s Power” revolt in 1986. With more than 95% of the ballots tallied, Marcos Jr had received about 30 million votes, more than double […]

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BANGKOK – Covid ambulance sirens are ringing out in Bangkok as the kingdom continues to grapple with record-breaking daily caseloads. But it’s the warning bells sounding around Thailand’s banks that are potentially the greater cause for alarm in one of Asia’s worst pandemic-hit and slowest recovering economies. Ratings agency S&P Global recently downgraded top Thai […]

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One year since a democracy-suspending coup, press freedom is dying in Myanmar. A military campaign of intimidation, censorship, arrests, and detentions of journalists has more recently graduated to outright killing, an escalation of repression that aims ultimately to stop independent media reporting on the junta’s crimes and abuses. In January, military authorities abducted local news […]

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BANGKOK – On one front, a student protest movement that once looked like an existential threat to the brass and crown has been squeezed and tamed into political submission. On another, outrage over the government’s perceived as corrupt bumbling in procuring sufficient Covid-19 vaccines has waned as the kingdom enters a vaccinated immunity sweet spot […]

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BANGKOK – When Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul met with Pfizer company representatives in Bangkok in late 2020, the businessman-cum-politician declined to place a Covid-19 vaccine order because in his words the shot was not yet proven effective on “yellow-skinned people”, according to government sources familiar with the meeting. In January, US vaccine-maker Moderna […]

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BANGKOK – When World Health Organization chief Tedros Adanom Ghebreyesus commended Thailand for its exemplary Covid-19 response at the global health agency’s assembly last November, Bangkok sought to leverage the plaudit for self-promotional purposes. The Thai Ministry of Public Health contracted a team of experts to help tell the kingdom’s containment success story via a […]

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BANGKOK – Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha declared a state of emergency early this morning to ban protests and sensitive news, a clampdown that will give ammunition to protestors baying for his military-aligned government’s ouster and monarchal reforms.   The decree was implemented in response to Wednesday’s student-led street demonstration in Bangkok that at one […]

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BANGKOK – When Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul read out 10 demands for monarchal reform in a midnight September 19 speech on a protest stage mounted on sacred royal grounds overlooking Bangkok’s Grand Palace, the tens of thousands of protesters in attendance loudly cheered every provocative point. The speech reprised the student leader’s now historic August 10 speech […]

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BANGKOK – At the largest student protest yet against Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha and his military-aligned coalition government, youthful speakers aired their democratic discontent on a range of touchy topics. But after over six hours of sometimes hilarious, sometimes rageful, sometimes musical dissent, one taboo topic was hinted at but never directly touched by […]

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The following is excerpted from an August 2 presentation Asia Times made for the Asia Foundation to assembled ambassadors and other dignitaries in Bangkok. BANGKOK – Many were initially reluctant to give Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha’s government undue or premature plaudits for his government’s Covid-19 response on fears that official data was understating the […]

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