Taking part in an election is seldom a walk in the park. But the Thai Senate race, which culminated this week, has put its candidates and voters through the shrubbiest of hedge mazes—and raised questions about the still-evolving state of democracy in the Southeast Asian nation of 72 million. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Thailand’s 2024 Senate election is the first of its kind after the upper legislative body was created by the country’s 2017 constitution that was implemented after successive coups had ousted former Thai governments—though the first group of Senators was not elected but rather appointed by the military in 2019. As the country has slowly begun to cast aside its military leaders—in general elections last year for the National Assembly’s lower chamber, voters overwhelmingly supported parties that ran on a pro-democratic platform—the fact that the military-appointed Senate (nicknamed “the junta’s senators”) remained in power until this year seemed a vestige of the past. Last year, the Senate thwarted the progressive and most popular candidate for Prime Minister from taking the premiership, handing it instead to the more moderate Srettha Thavisin, who formed a coalition with the military- and royal-linked conservative establishment. Now, even as those Senators leave office, the process for choosing their replacements has been described as the “most complicated election in the world” and slammed by critics as unnecessarily convoluted and undemocratic. Here’s what to know about the Thai Senate election—and where Thailand goes from here. A closed vote behind closed doors On Wednesday, nearly 3,000 senator candidates met at a convention center near Bangkok to vote on one another.
Comment on What the World’s ‘Most Complicated Election’ Means for Thailand’s Democracy
Koh Ewe, Time: World
Fri, 06/28/2024 - 3:30am
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