New Mandala

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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In some quarters the king is regarded as a key defender of Thai democracy. Which makes me wonder …
Has there been a royal statement urging the protesters from the People’s Alliance for (Sufficiency) Democracy to respect the fact that there was an election held last December and that this government is the result? And any royal [...]

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New Mandala readers who are new (or, perhaps, not so new) to the various online discussions of Thailand’s political future will find this summary page over at Thai Crisis rewards a visit.  It has been updated during 2008 to reflect the changing situation.

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Today New Mandala is not immediately in a position to add much to the analysis of the current standoff in central Bangkok between the PA(S)D and the Royal Thai Police.�
What I can do, of course, is provide links to some of the best “live” coverage.  Bangkok Pundit leads the charge, as usual, with a characteristically well-chosen mix [...]

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Performing Political Identity is an anthropological fieldwork-based study that explores the Democrat Party’s electoral dominance in southern Thailand, or more precisely, in its Buddhist-majority and Thai-speaking provinces. This “Democrat Ascendancy,” as I call it, dates from 1992 but is based on strong foundations established since the mid 1970s.  It is founded on electoral performance and histrionics that [...]

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I was sitting in the house of Jairan, a struggling farmer in Chiang Mai province, when the news came through that the Election Commission had recommended the dissolution of two parties in the governing coalition - Chart Thai and Matchima Thippatai. “It’s just like killing a tree,” Jairan commented. “You don’t just do it all [...]

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The Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) has recently released its report on Thailand’s 23 December 2007 general election.  The full report is available online.  It includes a long list of recommendations for future elections and a great deal of material about how the election was run.
In his foreword to the report ANFREL Chairman General Saiyud [...]

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New Mandala readers scouting for some more substantial weekend reading may want to have a look at these two new papers from one of our regular contributors, Michael H. Nelson.
The two new papers are:

“Thaksin’s 2005 Electoral Triumph:Looking Back From the Election in 2007”, published by the Southeast Asia Research Centre at the City University of Hong [...]

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