Thais have dubbed pre-election nights “the night the dogs howl” because vote-canvassers make late-night visits to those they have paid to ensure they vote appropriately. Their nocturnal meanderings stir sleeping dogs and whole villages wake up to the howling: an apt sound for an aching democracy…

…Looking at the bleak prospect of Thai politics in the coming year it is hard not to conclude that it is more than just the dogs who will be howling.

– Extracted from Michael Connors, “Dictatorship threatens to bury Thai democracy“, The Canberra Times, 4 May 2007.