: ‘Thailand’s Inconvenient Truth.’ Why This Billionaire Is Risking It All to Back Reform of the Monarchy #WorldNEWS Rising 34 stories above Bangkok’s Phetchaburi Road, the Thai Summit Tower

‘Thailand’s Inconvenient Truth.’ Why This Billionaire Is Risking It All to Back Reform of the Monarchy #WorldNEWS
Rising 34 stories above Bangkok’s Phetchaburi Road, the Thai Summit Tower is the headquarters of Thailand’s largest car parts manufacturer. Until recently, it was also home to an upstart political party headed by the companys 41-year-old heir, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. On the fifth floor, he and the fresh-faced activists of the Future Forward Party (FFP) would hold boisterous press conferences and hushed policy meetings. They gained 17% of the vote in last year’s general election despite being barely a year old.
That remarkable showing should have thrust 81 FFP lawmakers into Thailand’s 750-seat National Assembly. But the political establishment struck back. First, Thanathorn was banned from politics over shares he allegedly held in a media company. (Thai law says electoral candidates cannot hold such shares; Thanathorn insists they had been transferred to his mother. ) Then, on Feb. 21, the party was dissolved over alleged funding irregularities. The legal action was described as “politically motivated” by Human Rights Watch. With it, the political will of 6. 3 million voters was snuffed out.

Sitting down with TIME in the week before that decision, Thanathorn was sanguine. Over the past two decades, populist governments in Thailand have been removed from power twice by the military and three times by the courts. The FFP may have been a long way from Government House but the power nexus centered around the palace, the courts and the military was evidently spooked.
“The Future Forward Party is a vehicle, but even if they dissolve us, we will continue the journey,” shrugged Thanathorn at the time. “This year, Im sure, with me leading, or otherwise, well return to public demonstrations. ”
Thats to be expected. In the parlance of travel marketing, Thailand has long been sold as the Land of Smiles, but it could just as fairly be called the Land of Protests or Country of Coups. The Southeast Asian nation of 70 million has gone through seven attempted and 12 successful coups over the past century, while recent years have been punctuated by color-coded street protests aimed at paralyzing the sprawling capital. (Urban and southern royalists typically don yellow; rural voters from populous, rice-growing northern provinces wear red. )
Today, people are taking to the street once again. Clad in face masks, and flashing the three-fingered Hunger Games salute to the sound of Thai rap, thousands of protesters have thronged the capital over recent months, demanding political reform of a military-backed government seen as bungling and corrupt. While political grievances have festered for decades, “the FFP dissolution was the last straw,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, associate professor of political science at Bangkoks Chulalongkorn University.