preview

The Status of Democracy in Thailand

Satisfactory Essays

Since 2006, the outbreak of Thaksin corruption and the military coup, the political situation of Thailand has not been stable. After the fall of Thaksin, there were some changes in Thai people especially for the middle class. They began getting involved with politics, since then politics affairs not only belong to politicians or the ruler. As people have more participation in government’s projects, they started to challenge politicians and even the government and divided into two political movement groups: National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) as known as The Red shirt group and People’s Alliance for the Democracy (PAD) as known as The Yellow shirt group. It is ironic that both groups claim for democracy while they are opposite each other. One of reason is the economic difference between two groups, UDD is mainly formed by grass root class while PAD supporters are mostly from middle classes and well-educated background.
The reason that more people, especially people from middle classes are getting involved with politic is they want changes in political, they want to participant in choose the ‘good government’, however, what middle classes people experiencing is not the ‘democracy’ they think of and by the rise of Thaksin movement, it transformed into nightmare to them.
After three years of the coup, Thai middle classes changed their side and hoping for less democracy.

Kai Jäger (2012) proposed three hypothesis of why Thai middle classes turned

Get Access