A Political Earthquake in Thailand
On May 14th, Thailand held general elections. The results were a shock to the Thai political system.\xa0\xa0
Since a 2014 coup, the military leaders have dominated Thai politics. A main opposition party has challenged military rule, but has been genereally thwarted at every turn.\xa0 However, this year a third party emerged victorious: and their vision for the country represents a radically progressive shift in Thai politics.\xa0
The Move Forward Party, lead by a charismatic Harvard and MIT educated 42 year\xa0 Pita\xa0 Limjaroenrat won the elections. And they did so, according my guest today, by chanellening a kind of progressive populism that can change Thailand's domestic political culture and foreign policy in big ways.\xa0
Prashanth Parameswrn is a Fellow at the Wilson Center and founder of the ASEAN Wonk Substack Newsletter.\xa0 We kick off discussing the political context in which Move Forward won these elections. We then have an extended conversation about how the Military Junta has rigged the Thai political system in such a way that the Move Forward Party may never actually be able to form a government. Even if they did, the threat of a coup would loom large. We then have an extended conversation about what this election means in terms of Thai foreign policy and geopolitical competition in Southeast Asia between the US and China.\xa0 \xa0
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