Thai opposition leaders yesterday toured Bangkok in open-top vehicles in a final-day bid to woo voters, urging them to turn out in force to oust the military-backed government.
The kingdom goes to the polls today with voters tipped to issue a damning verdict on former coup leader Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha after nearly a decade in power.
However, in a country where coups and court rulings have often overturned election results, there are fears that the military could seek to cling on — despite the army chief saying there would be no intervention this time.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Pheu Thai party’s main prime ministerial candidate, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, waved and made the traditional Thai wai greeting to supporters as she toured the streets in an open-top vehicle.
Dozens of trucks decked out in the party’s scarlet banners paraded from the Democracy Monument toward Bangkok’s main shopping district.
Supporters waved flags and chanted: “Pheu Thai landslide.”
“I hope Thai people will vote for us to solve your problems,” Paetongtarn told reporters.
Despite giving birth to her second child less than two weeks ago, the 36-year-old showed no sign of flagging in the scorching tropical heat.
“It’s only been 12 days, I’m a little bit tired, but that’s okay,” she said. “I’m so excited.”
Pheu Thai has been leading opinion polls, but the party’s route to power could face roadblocks from a Thai Senate handpicked by the military under the 2017 junta-scripted constitution.
Paetongtarn’s billionaire tycoon father, Thaksin Shinawatra, was ousted as prime minister by a military coup in 2006, while her aunt suffered the same fate at Prayuth’s hands in 2014.
Today’s poll is the first since major youth-led pro-democracy protests erupted across Bangkok in 2020 with demands to curb the power and spending of Thailand’s king — breaching a long-held taboo on questioning the monarchy.
Those protests fizzled out as COVID-19 curbs were imposed and dozens of leaders were arrested, but their energy has fed into growing support for the rival opposition Move Forward Party (MFP).
MFP leader Pita Limjaroenrat made his own push on an open-top truck tour yesterday, rallying support through a loudhailer.
“Please give the younger generation the opportunity to govern the country — we will take care of the older generation,” he told passersby.
The election has shaped up as a generational clash between the pro-democracy opposition, backed by young and rural voters, and the conservative, military-allied royalist establishment embodied by Prayuth and his United Thai Nation party.
Prayut, 69, has made an unashamedly nationalist pitch for votes and painted himself as the only candidate capable of saving Thailand from chaos and ruin.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS