For Thailand, Post-Election Turmoil a Near-Certainty

Thailand has enjoyed a relative calm in the past few months. Political demonstrations have been orderly, and a string of bombs that shook the capital toward the end of 2010 did not continue into 2011. This lull, however, could be merely the calm before another storm.

In fact, with a general election scheduled for July 3, a distinct lack of fundamental change characterizes Thailand's faulty democratic system, offering scant hope for a political resolution to the country's longstanding fault lines in the short-to-medium term. ...