The future of Thailand is certainly uncertain

Over at Foreign Policy in Focus, Johanna Son writes about The Certainty of Uncertainty in Thailand.

Thailand, a deeply hierarchical society, is currently experiencing a “complex form of class warfare, in which the middle class, motivated by anti-corruption sentiments, has mobilized as a barrier against a populist government with heavy support from the rural masses and urban lower classes,” explained political analyst and professor Walden Bello of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. “What complicates it is that the traditional elites that benefited from the traditional political, economic, and cultural arrangements have encouraged the actions of these mobilized middle classes. These elites' power has been threatened by the Thaksin brand of populist democracy in a way that it was never threatened by the revolving-door type of parliamentary democracy prior to Thaksin.

Now led by its third president in less than a year, the only thing that seems to be sure about the future of Thailand is that instability will probably continue.