The Electoral Commission of Thailand has recommended the dissolution of the Thai Raksa Chart Party, citing grave violations of electoral rules by drawing the monarchy into politics.

This statement comes after the prime ministerial bid by Princess Ubolratana, the sister of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, was disqualified a few days after the party nominated her as a candidate. The Thai Raksa Chart Party is a known  offshoot of the Pheu Thai Party and is thus aligned with former fugitive prime ministers Thaksin Shinawatra and Yingluck Shinawatra.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court will assume the case and adjudicate as to whether the dissolution of the party is warranted, though it is unclear when such a decision will be made. This judgement will follow a slew of court decisions shutting down parties affiliated with these former prime ministers during the tenure of the military government.

Should the party be disbanded, it is estimated that the bloc seeking political office aligned to former PM Thaksin Shinawatra will lose over 200 candidates, just a month short of the election scheduled for March 24. Thai Raksa Chart is one of three parties loyal to the former leader. Nonetheless, the party leader Preechapol Pongpanich stated that the party would remain committed to campaigning for that election as normal.

His Majesty the King himself stated on national television on February 8th that the monarchy remains a unifying pillar of the nation. As such, members of the royal family must not participate in politics in violation of  a nearly century-long tradition after a constitutional monarchy system was implemented in the country in 1932. The following day, Thai Raksa Chart publicly announced that they had accepted the judgment of the king.

The military government repeatedly rescheduled the long-promised elections before the final March 24 date. This round of elections will see the Thai people elect a 500-person House of Representatives, while the 250-person senate is to be totally appointed by the military National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). Pro-democracy activists lament that this election is already skewed in the favor of the ruling military government, who aim to return as civilian politicians.

On December 22, a tumultuous series of waves pummelled coastal settlements on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java, killing nearly 300 and injury upwards of 1,000.

It was spurred by the eruption of the volcano Anak Krakatau — “child of Krakatoa” in Bahasa Indonesia — a subsidiary volcano formed from a caldera following the cataclysmic eruption of 1883. The volcano hadbecome increasingly active over the past few months.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman of the National Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia,, warned of a possible additional tsunami due to the continued eruptions of Anak Krakatau, urging people in coastal settlements not to carry out activities on the beach and to stay away from the coast until further notice is given.

The unconventional nature of this tsunami contributed to its surprise factor. It struck at 21:30 local time, and prior to the arrival waves, very few warning signs could be discerned. The sea water did not drastically recede as it would with an earthquake tsunami. Moreover, the activity of Anak Krakatau has often been described by locals as continuous but low-scale; thus, few designated the volcano as a potential cause for a tsunami.

The disaster called into question the efficacy of Indonesia’s tsunami warning systems. It was revealed by Nugroho that Indonesia’s early warning system is set to monitor earthquakes rather than undersea landslides and volcanic eruptions, both of which can cause deadly waves of the same magnitude. However, the institution of such a system was recognized as necessary due to thirteen percent of the world’s volcanoes being situated in Indonesia. A lack of funds and degradation of mechanisms involved also meant that any warning system had been defunct since 2012.

The tsunami that struck of the coast of Sulawesi earlier this year in September, as well as the calamitous boxing day tsunami of December 2004 that killed over 228,000 in 13 different countries were both spurred by earthquakes. Waves precipitated by volcanic debris as was the case in this recent tsunami are not as frequent.

Guyana, a Caribbean English-speaking nation of 750,000, faces inevitable political change as of December 21, following a dramatic parliamentary scene.

A no-confidence vote in the National Assembly shifted the scheduled general election campaign to March 2019,  almost two years before the constitutional term of incumbent President David A. Granger ends, causing a collapse in the fragile multiracial coalition government composed of the left-wing, predominantly Afro-Guyanese-backed alliance A Partnership National Unity (APNU), and the Alliance For Change (AFC).

President Granger, whose achievements include continued improvement of the education sector and upgrading irrigation systems, faced challenges controlling a wayward cabinet, all while his rapidly deteriorating health remained in the public eye. The vote of no-confidence was passed after Chandarass Persaud, a member of the AFC — the junior of party of the coalition — switched allegiance, lamenting that over the past four years, members of his party have acted as mere “yes men” of the more influential APNU. Though repeatedly urged to change his vote, he refused, putting into certain jeopardy the cohesion of the ruling coalition.

This unforeseen dissolution in government occurred a mere four years after the aforementioned coalition came into power during 2015 elections, in which it promised a more inclusive politics less based upon ethnic and racial grounds. However, President Granger evidently failed to effectively reconcile with the opposing People’s Progressive Party, (PPP), predominantly supported by the Indo-Guyanese, as Afro-Guyanese members of his coalition continued to deride the opposition. The failure of the current government increases the likelihood of the PPP winning the next election, following its strong performance in local elections.  

Ashley V. Anthony ‘22, a Guyanese undergraduate at Yale University and daughter of potential PPP presidential candidate Dr. Frank C.S. Anthony, remarked that she is in particular worried about the resurgence of racial issues, and how tensions will increase in the coming ninety days.

“People falsely believed that racial voting had died down with the rise of the APNU-AFC coalition, because the coalition was comprised of both Africans and Indians,” she said. “But the reality of the situation is that the Afro-Guyanese were voting for the APNU and the Indo-Guyanese for the AFC; racial divides still existed in what was believed to be a multiracial coalition.”

She further noted the importance of political parties appealing to youth with policy-based approaches rather than racially-based maneuvering.

The government that assumes control following the March 2019 elections has an additional, newfound responsibility of preparing the country’s environmental and industrial infrastructure for the production of oil, which is slated to begin in 2020, following the recent discovery of oil and natural gas off the country’s Atlantic coast. The country’s history of corruption also makes the handling of potential oil revenues an issue of concern.

The next three months will not only be a strength test for the democratic institutions of Guyana, but also the country’s social and ethnic fabric.

Following months of heavy July monsoon rains, the small landlocked nation of Laos faced a grim reminder of the disastrous possibilities damming the Mekong. A subsidiary dam of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric dam, known as “Saddle Dam D,” collapsed after enduring growing fractures. What resulted was a flash flood of disastrous proportions, precipitating the deaths of 40 people, 98 missing persons, and the displacement of 6600 villagers in the nation’s southern Attapeu province.

The Mekong River — roughly translated as “mother river” in many Tai dialects — has for countless generations been viewed by the millions of inhabitants along its banks as a giver of civilization, a lifeblood of communities. The river begins on the Tibetan Plateau in China; in Tibet, it is known as the Dzachu, and in other regions of China, the Lancang. The Chinese portion of the Mekong comprises approximately half the length of the entire river;it then runs a subsequent 3,000 miles through five Southeast Asian countries (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand Cambodia and Vietnam) before emptying into the South China Sea via the sprawling Mekong Delta.

However, despite the Mekong’s status as a near-sacred river long before the formation of nation states and the delimitation of today’s borders, the river has undoubtedly been the root cause of considerable socio-political distress in recent times. As populations grew exponentially and the water needed to fuel such growth became increasingly scarce, countries located upstream with significant control over the river — namely China — have sought to harness flowing waters for purposes such as hydropower and irrigation. As such, the rapid and frequent damming of the upper Mekong has severely affected downstream states’ ecologies and economies.  China’s iron-fisted grip on the riparian states of the lower basin stems from its reliance on hydropower, an energy source second only to coal power in prevalence of use, and the authoritarian nature of China’s government does little to slow down the proliferation of hydropower structures;

The People’s Republic of China currently has ten fully operational dams working on the upper basin of the river, and has several others planned, according to the Stimson Institute. Such dams cause water levels to fluctuate artificially, an unnatural effect that is often extremely drastic, resulting in, for example, dire ecological consequences for endemic species, such as the giant Mekong catfish, the population of which is radically dwindling. Furthermore, agricultural communities whose livelihoods depend on the river are often not made privy to Chinese control of water levels, and as such, are vulnerable and susceptible to unbeknown flash floods that destroy agricultural output.

Damming the river certainly stems from political motives, allowing China to increasingly manifest its control over the flow of resources on the Mekong. It is the byproduct of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the country’s flagship economic development policy involving investment in infrastructure and development across emerging nations worldwide. Experts and other governments have criticized the Chinese initiative as using  exclusively Chinese factors of production — Chinese planners, materials, and labor —in foreign projects, precluding the use of the host nation’s own human capital and resources and effectively resulting in a loss of sovereignty over the projects. A particular example of this is China’s planned dam in Cambodia’s lower Mekong basin, which, according to some analysts, would “literally kill the Mekong.” These projects, established under the pretext of development, serve to expand Chinese influence more broadly in Southeast Asia

Through modifying the Mekong for its own needs, China’s control of the river’s upper and lower basins would effectively “sandwich” Southeast Asia; powers such as the United States do not have as vested an interest in the river basin and mainland Southeast Asia as they do in the South China Sea, and as such, would not be inclined to act as a check to China’s rapid expansion of influence in the Mekong basin.

Bodies such as the intergovernmental Mekong Commission exist to prevent the wholesale degradation of the river. But new measures may be necessary to check the rapidly spreading influence of Southeast Asia’s northern neighbour. We should call on powers to be effective arbitrators and use multilateral organizations to take more resolute stances in preventing river’s complete degradation, protecting the river’s ecology and thereby the economic livelihoods of common people along the Mekong.