Thai voters support change
Thai voters overwhelmingly sought to end nearly a decade of military ruleand voted in favor of two opposition parties that have pledged to limit the power of two powerful conservative institutions: the military and the monarchy.
With 97 percent of the vote counted as of early this morning, the progressive Move Forward Party was neck and neck with the populist Pheu Thai Party. Move Forward had won 151 seats to Pheu Thai’s 141 in the 500-seat House of Representatives.
“We can frame this election as a referendum on traditional power centers in Thai politics,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. “People want change, and not just a change of government. They want structural reforms.”
What is also clear is that the results are a humbling blow to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in a coup in 2014.
Go forward: The party has targeted compulsory military conscription and is trying change a law that criminalizes criticism of the royal family. It has made great strides, capturing young urban voters and voters in the capital, Bangkok.
Phew Thai: The party was founded by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is still remembered as a champion of the poor after he was ousted in a 2006 coup amid allegations of corruption. Thaksin’s daughter was the leading choice for prime ministeraccording to surveys.
What comes next: As both Pheu Thai and Move Forward do not have enough seats to form a majority, they will have to negotiate with other parties to form a coalition. But under the rules of the Thai system, written by the military after the coup, the junta would still play kingmaker. A decision on who will lead can take weeks or even months.
Turkey’s decisive election
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced the toughest political challenge of his 20 years in power when Turkish voters went to the polls yesterday. The result could reshape Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy.
The results still coming in, but the state news agency reported that initial results showed Erdogan ahead. Opposition leaders dismissed those figures, and Erdogan’s main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, wrote on Twitter: “We are leading.”
If no candidate secures a majority, the two front-runners would go to a run-off on May 28. Follow our live coverage.
Background: The vote was in many ways a referendum on Erdogan’s two decades as Turkey’s dominant politician. He faced an extremely tight race, largely due to anger at the state of the economywhich has suffered from painful inflation since 2018.
The vote also came three months later earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey, raising questions about whether Erdogan’s emphasis on construction is produced buildings that were unsafe.
Election Integrity: Turkey is neither a full-scale democracy nor a full-scale autocracy, and Erdogan has tilted the political playing field in his favor over the past two decades.
The war in Ukraine: A defeat for Erdogan would be a boon for the West and a loss for Russia. Erdogan has increased trade with Moscow, sought closer ties with President Vladimir Putin and blocked NATO expansion.
Cyclone Mokka makes landfall
A storm forecast to be the strongest to hit Myanmar in more than a decade made landfall near the Bangladesh border yesterday. The storm, Cyclone Mocha, has killed at least six people, but early reports suggest it has so far not led to the humanitarian disaster that authorities feared.
The area affected by the cyclone, in western Myanmar, is home to some of the world’s poorest people. The storm passed through Cox’s Bazar, a Bangladeshi city that is home to the world’s largest refugee camp, although officials said they had yet to receive reports of damage there.
The World Food Program said it was preparing for a large-scale rescue operation. But some officials expressed cautious hope that the region could be spared the storm’s worst possible damage as it weakened over land.
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Asia and the Pacific
Many Asian American women are named after Connie Chung, a veteran American television journalist. Author Connie Wang explored the phenomenon, which she calls “Generation Connie.”
“We all have our own stories about how our families came to the United States and why they chose the name they did,” she wrote. “But we’re also part of a bigger story: about the patterns that form from specific immigration policies and the ripple effect that a woman on TV caused just by being there doing her job.”
Witch hunt in India
For centuries in India, the branding of witches was fueled largely by superstition. A crop would fail, a well would run dry, or a family member would fall ill, and the villagers would find someone—almost always a woman—to blame for an accident whose cause they did not understand.
Many Indian states have enacted laws to eradicate witch hunting, but the practice consists in some states. From 2010 to 2021, more than 1,500 people were killed following accusations of witchcraft, according to government data.
One state has tried to stop the practice by deploying “witch hunt prevention campaign teams”, which conduct street plays to raise awareness. But enforcement of anti-witch hunt laws can be weak, and entrenched beliefs are hard to change, activists say.
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