Nearly a month ago, Thailand’s government dissolved as a response to ongoing protests in Bangkok. The crown issued a decree for new elections to be held.
The election date has been set for February 2 and registration for the election has taken place. The Democrat Party, which is in support of the protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and an appointment of a “people’s council”, has vowed to boycott the elections. The Democrat Party has not won an election since 1992 and the common analysis is that Yingluck’s Puea Thai Party will win in the new election, as it has won every election since 2001.
In addition to boycotting the election, the protestors have tried to block anyone else from registering for the elections, which has resulted in injuries and death. A number of people have been camping out in Bangkok, which attracted an unidentified gunman in the early morning hours that open fired and also killed and injured people.
Yingluck has put forth a proposal to establish a National Reform Council that would run parallel with the government elected in February. The council would recruit 2,000 people from a variety of professions who would then select 499 representatives who would then go on to make recommendations and proposals for constitutional amendments. The proposal is very similar to what the protestors are calling for, however, they have rejected this. Their main goal in pressing for the appointed “people’s council” is to “rid the government of the influence of Thaksin.”
The military has remained somewhat neutral and has vowed to assist with the voting process. There was a dust up, and still a lot of uncertainty, around a comment made by the head of the military that said that the door was neither open nor shut in reference to a coup. The public relations team tried to quickly quell that fire, though it is still a concern of people who are familiar with the history of the military’s involvement in government making here in Thailand.
The most that these protest have affected me is that a couple weekends ago, as I was trying to leave Bangkok to go home, the intersections near the public transit stops were overwhelmed and taken over by protestors, making any sort of travel through the city a nightmare. Additionally, the ONET, the national test for English, had to be rescheduled, as it was originally scheduled for February 1-2. The new date for the test is February 8-9, which was the weekend that the Thai Youth Theatre festival was planned. Luckily, the school that the festival will be at had another weekend free and we were able to reschedule the festival for the weekend of February 21-23.
It doesn’t look like things are slowing down here for the time being. It also doesn’t look like things are going to heat up until closer to election time.