Former Thai leader returns from exile and goes to jail
PBS NewsHourAPR 2023
Now that Thaksin is back in Thailand, the country may finally get some respite from a cycle of elections and coups, as the two-decade political feud between his faction and the royalist military elite has ended with a political compromise. The long-sought political stability will last so long as there's success in tackling deep-rooted problems and balancing urban and rural interests, but the alliance was certainly necessary to reach this point.
The fact that Thaksin and his party have become allies to their once military rivals so as to cobble together a new government and let the billionaire populist return home shows that the Thai elite isn't committed to democracy at all. As supposedly opposite forces have cynically joined efforts to prevent the democratically elected Move Forward party from taking office, it's clear that their goal is exclusively to protect the status quo.