Hello everyone from steamy Bangkok!
I visited my very first (tiny) red-shirt demonstration last night and didn’t understand a word besides ‘Prayuth Chan-o-cha’, which was always followed by cheers. I’m on my way shortly to Ayutthaya and then a loooong time in Chiang Mai, so if you’re about let me know!
In the meantime, I just wanted to flag the horrific disaster in Indonesia Saturday night. Details are still developing so we will revisit on Wednesday, but I would be remiss to not mention it at all. This report from Dera Menra Sijabat for New York Times really underlines how terrifying it was for attendees to the Malang, East Java, football game. As of writing, the death toll has been revised to 125 but with dozens and dozens injured I would expect to see that rise. Many of the dead were children.
There’s no Cambodia update this morning because I’ve been working on a comprehensive piece about the recent developments in the trafficking stories. Should be ready this week, ideally.
See you Wednesday,
Erin Cook
🇹🇭 Prayuth’s not going anywhere (for now)
He’s back. That’s the (unsurprising) ruling from the Constitutional Court to the opposition-led challenge to Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s eligibility to hold the prime ministership. The court decided his term began when the new constitution did — April 6, 2017. The court split on this 6-3.
“I salute the court's ruling and I thank all my beloved Thai people for sending me courage. I will continue to work hard to push our country toward prosperity as we aim to create a better future for our next generations,” the reinstated PM said on Facebook, as per Nikkei Asia.
This means he’ll steady the ship as Thailand hosts the APEC summit next month and, ideally, through the dark economic clouds.
The gains may only be short-term, Thanaphum Charoensombatpanich warns in a Thai Enquirer op-ed. “The feeling among the opposition is that Gen. Prayuth would not be able to pull out a magic wand and fix the country’s problems, instead with the oncoming economic downturn that is spooking the world could push the people to look for a party that has in the past managed to wade through these rough seas,” they write. This is a piece worth reading in full (though it is, at times, vicious, which I personally love but know others don’t always), particularly on potential factional splitting.
Boonyakiat Karavekphan, a political scientist at Bangkok's Ramkamhaeng University, told Nikkei Asia in the piece quoted above that the decision is an easy middle-ground: “I think the court ruling is a moderate decision that seeks the best solution which will not cause any political disruption or any deadlock to harm the country.”
Elsewhere, the economy is slowly becoming rooted but that’s an everywhere story not just a Thailand story so we’ll take a regional look at that shortly.
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