BANGKOK — Leaders of Thailand’s newest pro-democracy party are under an ethics investigation that could see them cast out of the National Assembly over allegations echoing those that saw the party’s predecessor dissolved by court order earlier this month.

Thailand’s National Anti-Corruption Commission said August 8 it had ordered a probe of 44 opposition members of the parliament accused of breaking the ethics rules for lawmakers for having sponsored a 2021 bill, which failed, to amend the country’s controversial royal defamation, or lèse-majesté, law.

The announcement came a day after the Constitutional Court dissolved the progressive Move Forward Party, which won last year’s national election, for campaigning to soften the law, which prescribes up to 15 years in jail for each offense.

The court said the party’s efforts posed a threat to national security, and followed on from its January ruling that the campaign was a veiled attempt to upend Thailand’s constitutional monarchy governmental structure, a claim the party denied.

All 44 lawmakers now under investigation by the anti-corruption commission were Move Forward members. Five were banned from public office for 10 years in the August 7 ruling that dissolved the party. The other 39 have since joined the People’s Party, set up in the wake of Move Forward’s dissolution to take its place, and include its new leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut.

If the commission concludes the 39 did breach the ethics rules, it would then send the case to the Supreme Court, which could ban them from public office as well.

Analysts told VOA the previous court rulings on Move Forward’s campaign to amend the royal defamation law laid the groundwork for their possible convictions.

“The Constitutional Court has essentially delivered a verdict that could serve as a catalyst for upcoming verdicts against these 44 MPs,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.

The Supreme Court may follow different procedures than the Constitutional Court and decide to call its own witnesses, he said.

“But it would be quite an interesting outcome if the Supreme Court ruled in a way that contradicts the Constitutional Court’s verdict, given that the Constitutional Court is treated as the highest court in Thailand,” he added.

Verapat Pariyawong, who teaches Thai law and politics at SOAS University of London, also pointed to the precedent set by even earlier court verdicts that banned leaders of Future Forward, a progressive party that was dissolved by court order in 2020 and then gave rise to Move Forward.

He said the case of Pannika Wanich was especially relevant. Pannika, a lawmaker for each party in turn, was banned from public office for life by the Supreme Court last year for breaking ethics rules by posting a photo online in 2010 deemed to disparage the monarchy.

“The MPs in this [new] case, they didn’t make remarks in the same way that Pannika did. But they sponsored or they agreed to support the draft legislation [to amend the royal defamation law] directly or tacitly. And if the court follows the interpretation in Pannika’s case, they could expand the scope of the law to cover those MPs and therefore ban them,” Verapat said.

Officially, Thailand’s constitutional monarchy is meant to stay out of politics. However, the country’s recent string of progressive parties, and much of their base, say it has long wielded outsized influence over the government in favor of Thailand’s military and conservative elites.

They accuse those forces of weaponizing the royal defamation law to persecute parties, lawmakers and activists seeking to rein them in and move Thailand toward a more genuine democracy.

Since 2020, Thailand’s courts have charged 272 people with breaking the royal defamation law, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a local advocacy group.

Move Forward made amending the law, to limit who could file related court cases and lower the maximum jail term allowed, a central plank of the reform agenda that helped it win last year’s general election. Despite that win, conservative lawmakers blocked the party from winning a vote in the National Assembly for prime minister, shunting it into opposition.

Party supporters see the courts and commissions as doing the military and conservative elite’s bidding as well, and the broad language of some laws and rules as helping them do it.

The ethics rules the 39 People’s Party lawmakers are now accused of breaking say office holders must protect the country’s constitutional monarchy. The analysts, though, told VOA they give little counsel on what that means, leaving judges ample leeway.

“It’s open to interpretation, because … there is no clear definition about protection of the monarchy,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political scientist at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University.

“And when we talk about interpretation, it always means that if you are the target of the elite or the establishment then they could find anything to [rule] against you,” he added.

The analysts said the People’s Party is also running the risk of being dissolved altogether, as were Future Forward and Move Forward before it, by carrying on their agenda of amending the royal defamation law.

The party did not reply to VOA’s requests for comment. At a news conference on Aug. 9, though, party leader Natthaphong said they would “not be careless” in going about it, in hopes of avoiding their predecessors’ fate.

Whatever the new party’s fate, the analysts say the monarchy, or how conservative elites are seen to be using the laws that protect it for their own ends, will remain a major fault line defining Thai politics and dividing the public.

“The issue of the monarchy has been used by those politicians who would like to ensure that they remain in power,” said Verapat. “It’s those people who rely on issues of lèse-majesté to attack parties like MFP or People’s [Party], so that dynamic will continue as long as … the Constitutional Court can rely on lèse-majesté to disband political parties.”

Napon said that may also portent more rocky politics ahead for a country that has seen 13 coups over the past century and several rounds of mass, sometimes violent, protests over the last two decades.

“The problem is that it’s not clear that political parties can represent these divides effectively in parliament or during election campaigns due to legal limits, because these topics are considered highly sensitive and some off limits by the Constitutional Court,” he said.

“It means parliament will be very inept in representing actual divides in society,” he added. “And that leaves people with grievances that could only be expressed through means of street protest, which we have seen before did not lead to meaningful results other than … more repression and jail time.”
…

BEIJING — Vietnam’s new leader To Lam is making China the destination for his first overseas visit, signaling the continuing importance the Southeast Asian country places on its giant neighbor even as it strengthens ties with the United States and others. 

Lam stepped off a Vietnam Airlines plane on an overcast Sunday morning in Guangzhou, a major manufacturing and export hub near Hong Kong, China’s state media reported. 

He will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on his three-day visit, which comes about two weeks after Lam was confirmed as general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, the country’s top political position. He succeeded Nguyen Phu Trong, who died last month after 13 years as leader. 

Lam also has held the largely ceremonial title of the nation’s president since May. 

The new leader is expected to continue his predecessor’s strategy of balancing ties with China, the United States, Russia and others, Yu Xiangdong, the director of the Institute for Vietnam Studies at China’s Zhengzhou University, wrote Saturday in the state-run Global Times newspaper. 

“The fact that Lam chose China as his first overseas visit destination since taking office is a sign that Vietnam attaches great importance to its relations with China,” Yu said in an opinion piece. “But at the same time, judging from experience, the country is not by any means going to give the U.S. the cold shoulder.” 

Vietnam upgraded its ties with the United States and Japan last year to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the country’s highest designation for a diplomatic relationship. Relations with China and India also have been given the same designation. 

The United States and its ally Japan have been developing closer ties with Vietnam’s communist government — America’s former foe in the Vietnam War — as they seek partners in a growing economic and strategic rivalry with China. 

When Xi visited Vietnam in December, the two countries announced they would build “a shared future that carries strategic significance.” The agreement, which Chinese state media has described as an elevation of ties, was seen as a concession by Vietnam, which had resisted using that wording in the past. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Lam in Vietnam in June after visiting North Korea on a rare overseas trip for the Russian leader, who has been ostracized by many countries because of the 2022 invasion and still-ongoing war in Ukraine. 

Lam’s agenda in Guangzhou includes visiting sites in the southern China city where Vietnam’s former communist leader Ho Chi Minh spent time, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said. 

Ho, the founder and first president of communist Vietnam, was in southern China in the 1920s and again in the 1930s as part of the Soviet Union’s efforts to expand communism globally. 

Though they have long ties as one-party communist states, Vietnam and China have sparred repeatedly over territory that both claim in the South China Sea. China also briefly invaded parts of northern Vietnam in 1979. 

A Vietnamese coast guard ship recently took part in joint drills in the Philippines, which has had a series of violent encounters with China over contested territory in the South China Sea. 

Still, Vietnam has benefited economically from investment by Chinese manufacturers, which have moved production to the Southeast Asian country in part to skirt U.S. restrictions on solar panels and other exports from China. 

During Xi’s December visit, the two countries signed an agreement to cooperate on railway projects, which could improve trade connections between the two. China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner. 

 
…

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — With its reindeer sleigh rides, camel racing and stunning landscapes with room to roam, Mongolia is hoping to woo visitors who are truly looking to get away from it all.

Like most countries, its tourism industry was devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has launched a “Welcome to MonGOlia” campaign to win people back. The government has added flights and streamlined the visa process, offering visa-free visits for many countries.

At least 437,000 foreign tourists visited in the first seven months of this year, up 25% over the same period last year, including increasing numbers from Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Visitors from South Korea nearly doubled, thanks in part to the under-four-hour flight.

Despite the gains, Mongolia’s government is still short of its goal of 1 million visitors per year from 2023-25 to the land of Genghis Khan, which encompassed much of Eurasia in its 13th-century heyday and is now a landlocked nation located between Russia and China.

With a population of 3.3 million people, about half of them living in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, there’s plenty of open space for the adventure tourist to explore, said Egjimaa Battsooj, who works for a tour company. Its customized itineraries include horseback trips and camping excursions with the possibility of staying in gers, the felt-covered dwellings still used by Mongolia’s herders.

There’s little chance of running across private property, so few places are off-limits, she said.

“You don’t need to open a gate, you don’t need to have permission from anyone,” she said, sitting in front of a map of Mongolia with routes marked out with pins and strands of yarn.

“We are kind of like the last truly nomad culture on the whole planet,” she added.

Lonely Planet named Mongolia its top destination in its Best in Travel 2024 report. The pope’s visit to Mongolia last year also helped focus attention on the country. Its breakdancers became stars at last year’s Asian Games. And some local bands have developed a global following, like The Hu, a folk-metal band that incorporates traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing with modern rock.

Still, many people know little about Mongolia. American tourist Michael John said he knew some of the history about Genghis Khan and had seen a documentary on eagles used by hunters before deciding to stop in Ulaanbaatar as part of a longer vacation.

“It was a great opportunity to learn more,” the 40-year-old said.

Tourism accounted for 7.2% of Mongolia’s gross domestic product and 7.6% of its employment in 2019 before collapsing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the World Bank. But the organization noted “substantial growth potential” for Mongolia to exploit, with “diverse nature and stunning sceneries” and sports and adventure tourism possibilities.

Mongolia tourism ads focus on those themes, with beautiful views of frozen lakes in winter for skating and fishing, the Northern Lights and events like reindeer sledding and riding, camel racing and hiking.

Munkhjargal Dayan offers rides on two-humped Bactrian camels, traditional archery and the opportunity to have eagles trained for hunting perch on a visitor’s arm.

“We want to show tourists coming from other countries that we have such a way of life in Mongolia,” he said, waiting for customers by a giant statue of Genghis Kahn on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.

Outside the lively capital, getting around can be difficult in summer as the steppes become waterlogged, and there is limited infrastructure, a shortage of accommodation and a deficit of skilled labor in tourism destinations.

It is also easy for foreigners to get lost, with few signs in English, said Dutch tourist Jasper Koning. Nevertheless, he said he was thoroughly enjoying his trip.

“The weather is super, the scenery is more than super, it’s clean, the people are friendly,” he said.
…