Thailand is preparing to go to the polls on July 3 in an election that is supposed to mark the restoration of full democracy to the country, one of the liveliest, best-endowed and most promising countries in Asia. But the way the campaign is going, the chances are that Thailand will face another coup or dictatorship before long.
Opinion polls — for what they are worth in a land also renowned for vote-buying and corruption — give the opposition Pheu Thai Party a 47 to 40 percent lead over the Democrats, the main party in the government.
For all the colorful jamboree of election posters and blaring campaign music, it is a measure of the lack of progress that the election is seen, correctly surely, as a continuing contest between the nouveau arriviste elite around ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the older entrenched elites of monarchy, military, bureaucrats and rich Chinese businessmen.