Is an election the answer for Thailand?

Nicholas Farrelly - 25 Mar, 2011

An election is not the answer to Thailand’s current crisis. The problem here is not about vote-buying or corruption. It has to do with those in power and their continued avoidance of the most important issues – political grievances, double standards, the unequal share of political power and the uneven distribution of national wealth.

– Extracted from Pavin Chachavalpongpun, “An election will not fix Thailand’s woes”, East Asia Forum, 22 March 2011.

About the Author
Nicholas Farrelly
Dr Nicholas Farrelly is the co-founder of New Mandala. A graduate of the Australian National University and the University of Oxford, over the past 20 years he has undertaken research in Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and India. Nicholas is Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania and formerly the Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, where he also led the ANU Myanmar Research Centre from 2015 to 2017.
New Mandala is supported by the Australian National University (ANU), a world-leading centre of research and teaching on Southeast Asia that has hosted the site since its founding in 2006. New Mandala's editors make editorial decisions independently of the ANU, and the views expressed at New Mandala are solely those of contributors and do not represent the institutional position(s) of the ANU or any of its constituent parts.
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