Forgot to post this earlier – after this article was published, the third reading of the constitution amendment bill was indeed voted down in parliament. But the point of this piece still stands… The Constitutional Court’s recent verdict on the legality of constitutional amendment seems straightforward at initial glance. Any effort to write a new…

I was in first grade when I woke up, one fateful day in 2006, to go to school. Alas, school was cancelled. A military coup was happening. A military coup? Meaningless words to a first grader, but at least it meant more time to sleep. Almost fifteen years have now gone by since that military…

In Thai, there is an oft-used phrase: tok ma tai, “to die after falling off a horse.” It is an idiom that describes how someone can do something well almost to completion, only to make a mess of things just before reaching the finish line.  For many, this is an idiom that increasingly looks fitting for…

In a country obsessed with oracles and fortune telling, few are more famous than one prophecy on Thailand’s political future. It has existed for years — some claim to have first read it in the 1980s — and continues to resurface periodically on the internet. Written as poetry, the prophecy predicted that as the ninth…

The Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation Anek Laothamatas is not a man who typically generates headlines. Yet he managed to raise more than a few eyebrows when he declared that in seven years, Thailand will send a spacecraft to orbit the moon.  By becoming the fifth nation in Asia to have this…

Thailand held its first local elections since the 2014 military coup on Sunday, amid the return of local coronavirus transmission and months of political protests. Across the nation, votes were cast for Provincial Administrative Organization (POA) candidates.  After a long suspension of local democracy, did these PAO elections mark a new chapter for Thai politics?…

My piece for Thai Enquirer: “I’m going to lose my marbles,” a friend messaged me while quarantined in a hotel room. “…if I have to lockdown here. I came back to escape that!”  He had spent most of the year studying in Canada, hunkering down in Vancouver as cases began climbing throughout the fall. Finally,…

My piece for Thai Enquirer: Last week, parliament gathered to debate and vote on various proposals related to constitutional reform. Nothing out of the ordinary transpired, except for one thing: the sheer amount of airtime dedicated not to the merits of the proposals themselves, but rather for scrutiny of the Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw)…

My piece this week for Thai Enquirer: In August, a user posted on Pantip, Thailand’s most popular online forum with the topic: “When you’re following politics so much it makes you stressed, what can I do?” She added: “I’ve already been depressed for a year. Reading political news everyday and seeing all the news about…

My article for Thai Enquirer, on Japan’s new prime minister and the ramifications his administration has for the region: On August 15, 2012, Abe Shinzo was persuaded to run for the Japanese premiership. It was not the first time he had done so; he had already served as prime minister in 2006, only to resign…