{"id":37211,"date":"2019-03-25T03:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T03:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37211"},"modified":"2019-03-25T03:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T03:22:40","slug":"is-thailands-election-democratic-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=37211","title":{"rendered":"Is Thailand&#8217;s election democratic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article-body\" readability=\"84.3410852713\">\n<p>The last time <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/thailand.html\">Thailand<\/a> tried to hold an election in 2014, it ended with a military coup.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An army general took over as prime minister and promised to hold a new election.<\/p>\n<p>It has taken five years for people to be given the chance to vote.<\/p>\n<p>At east 92,000 polling stations opened across Thailand on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha wants to remain in office.<\/p>\n<p>He faces a strong challenge from Pheu Thai, the most prominent anti-military-government party linked to former leader Thaksin Shinawatra.<\/p>\n<p>Six million young people are casting their ballot for the first time. And since the coup, numerous new parties have sprung up to court their votes.<\/p>\n<p>But how democratic is the election?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Presenter:<\/strong> Nick Clark<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guests:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sunai Phasuk &#8211; senior Thailand researcher at Human Rights Watch<\/p>\n<p>Michael Montesano &#8211; senior fellow and coordinator of the Thailand Studies programme at Singapore&#8217;s ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institute<\/p>\n<p>Pavida Pananond &#8211; economist and professor of international business at the Thammasat Business School<\/p>\n<p><span>Source:<\/span>\u00a0<span>Al Jazeera News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last time Thailand tried to hold an election in 2014, it ended with a military coup.\u00a0 An army general took over as prime minister and promised to hold a new election. It has taken five years for people to be given the chance to vote. At east 92,000 polling stations opened across Thailand on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}