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Police cleared a pro-democracy protest site next to Wat Benjamabophit in Dusit district Monday and took its leader into custody.

Kampee: 'Nation demands democracy'

Around 50 people joined the gathering at the site Monday morning. The group was led by Sr Gp Capt Kampee Kampeerayanon, secretary-general of the Thai People Sovereignty Party.

The demonstrators called for a return to democracy and setting up a people's council to take part in the country's administration.

A team of police along with army and city law enforcement officers went to the site to quash the demonstration.

Sr Gp Capt Kampee said he was leading people who want freedom and liberty and the right to seek justice.

Following the 1932 Siamese Revolution in which Thailand changed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, the country has struggled to introduce a true democracy; but now the nation is demanding it, Sr Gp Capt Kampee said.

A people's council should be created so people from all sectors of society can have a say in the country's administration, said Sr Gp Capt Kampee.

Pol Maj Gen Watcharapong Damrongsri, chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau's (MPB) Division 1, said officers were aware the group had started setting up a stage for the gathering on Sunday night. They did not ask for a permit to stage the protest, while the gathering had occupied lanes of Nakhon Pathom Road and obstructed traffic, the officer said.

At 11am, officers used loud speakers to tell demonstrators to disperse, saying they were breaking the law which bans political gatherings of five people or more.

Following three announcements, police moved in and took away Sr Gp Capt Kampee. Officers also deployed vans to take other demonstrators home. The stage was then torn down.

Deputy chief of the MPB, Pol Maj Gen Panurat Lakboon, said the demonstration's leader will be charged with violation of the National Council for Peace and Order's order barring political assemblies of five people or more as well as the Public Assembly Act.

The offender could face a jail term of up to six months or a fine of up to 10,000 baht, he said.

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Excerpt from:
Police break up pro-1932 democracy protest - Bangkok Post

The country's economic rise has been meteoric, lifting millions of people out of poverty, but it's also suffered a stream of deadly terror attacks and a failed military coup last year, which prompted a clampdown on civil liberties.

Turkey in 2017 is a vastly different country to a decade ago and on Sunday, the Turkish people will vote in a referendum on a new constitution that could hand Erdogan unprecedented powers, cementing his position for years to come.

Shifting Turkey away from a parliamentary republic to a presidential one, is at the heart of the proposals, but the vote has also become a plebiscite on Erdogan and his footprint on the country.

The 18-article constitutional reform package has been dubbed the "power bill," and would effectively consolidate the authority of three legislative bodies into one executive branch, with the President as its head.

The President would be given the authority to appoint ministers and judges without parliament's approval, design a state budget and dissolve parliament.

Currently, the President's role is supposed to be largely ceremonial, but Erdogan has already broken with tradition and kept himself as the face of Turkey's leadership.

If the Turkish people vote yes, the country will get rid of all the checks and balances that keep the government in line, according to Esra Ozyurek, the chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the London School of Economics.

"Parliament will become totally ineffective, just rubber stamping Erdogan's policies. There will be no prime minister -- all the power will be in Erdogan's hands."

Erdogan has essentially ruled Turkey for more than 13 years -- he rose to power as prime minister in 2003 and stayed in that position until he was elected president in 2014.

"Erdogan clearly has charismatic aspects -- the people who love him love him so much, and people who hate him, they hate him intensely," Ozyurek said.

"It's rare to meet anyone without strong feelings toward him."

"Let's make consolidation in this great historic reform and put in place the foundation stones of a strong, leading and prosperous Turkey with unity, solidarity and integrity," he said.

He and his senior ministers have argued that a stronger government is needed to deal with the spate of recent terror attacks.

Extraordinary changes came to Turkey in July 2016, after a failed military coup prompted a purge that reached just about every institution in public life.

According to Turkish state media, 249 people were killed in the coup attempt, and had it been successful, Turkey may have been plunged into civil war.

His government subsequently imposed a state of emergency giving him unprecedented powers; this has been extended several times.

The government has detained tens of thousands of Erdogan's political opponents, as well as journalists and civil society groups and removed more than 100,000 people from their jobs, including school teachers and security officers.

Among those imprisoned were the leaders of the main pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, as the government continues to stamp out Kurdish opposition.

The purge also targeted anyone with links to Fethullah Gulen, Erdogan's friend-turned-rival, who lives in the United States in exile.

"People are afraid to talk. You can get in a taxi and complain about Erdogan, and the driver might record you and take you to the police," Ozyurek said.

"I've heard of activists going to the beach and swimming out to sea so they can have a frank conversation without being heard."

The Turkish people had already seen a forceful response from the government, when a 2013 peaceful sit-in over plans to demolish the Gezi Park in central Istanbul turned into a nationwide protest movement against Erdogan, who was then prime minister.

Many of Erdogan's most loyal supporters come from Turkey's rising middle class, whose lives have transformed in the country's economic boom.

"Now the middle class has a different lifestyle. If you take today a couple in their 30s with two kids, and compare them with another couple 10 years ago, they live a different life," said Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, who served as EU ambassador to Turkey from 2006 to 2011.

Pierini said that when Erdogan became prime minister, his government had adopted the wave of reforms from its predecessors and "got their act together," bringing infrastructure and services to the regions.

The government also made credit more easily available to the middle class.

"Today's couple has an apartment -- of course with a mortgage. They have a car -- of course with credit. They go to shopping centers and they travel. They can take a domestic airline that didn't exist until 2008," he said.

Turkey has also been changed by a series of terror attacks, which some see as a failure by the government to manage long-standing tensions with Kurdish groups and to deal with the Syria conflict on its doorstep.

The US and other countries have long called on Turkey to seal its border with Syria, as ISIS appears to have used Turkey as thoroughfare to smuggle people and resources in and out of Syria.

Almost all recent attacks in Turkey have been blamed on either ISIS or the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

"Tourism in Turkey is in shambles," Ozyurek said. "It is one of the biggest industries, but now all the hotels are empty. And who would want to come to a country where it doesn't feel safe?"

"There used to be a thriving urban nightlife, but not now. It's no longer the cheerful happy city it once was."

What's clear is its role as a bridge between the West and the Islamic east is changing.

And the country now appears to be turning away from the West.

Turkey applied to become a member of the European Union in 1987. Negotiations only began in 2005 and talks have since hit a wall.

If the Turkish people vote "Yes" on Sunday, the country is in for yet another decade of change.

Original post:
How Erdogan transformed Turkey's democracy in a decade - CNN

It was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a turning point. Following 16 years of Chavismo dominance, in December 2015 the democratic opposition in Venezuela had turned the tables; democratically. Democracy and Venezuela arent two words often heard side by side in a positive statement. But The Democratic Unity Roundtable (the opposition coalition, MUD as its known in Spanish) won the last round of elections with overwhelming results: 14 million Venezuelans elected 112 candidates as opposition deputies out of 167, a clear super-majority. Some (perhaps nave) freedom loving Venezuelans sensed real change.

Constitutionally, the opposition led parliament now had the numbers to legislate real change, remove members of the corrupt and pro-government Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) and National Electoral Council (CNE), as well as to veto ministers and even the vice-president.

The National Assembly held its official opening by swearing in all deputies, both pro and anti-government. The previous parliament, in line with the Chavismo ways, had been hostile to the free press. This parliament invited them all back in. The old guard, however, was not going to leave quietly. And Venezuela quickly learned that lame ducks can still bite.

In its desperation, the outgoing Chavismo-majority National Assembly, that was still in place for a few more days, named 13 new justices and 21 replacements for the TSJ, violating all appointment rules and established protocol. Over half of the new justices lacked the legal qualifications and experience to serve on the courts. And is if to mock all judiciary logic and moral coherence, just a couple of months ago, they placed Maikel Moreno as president of the Supreme Court, a convicted felon for murder. You cant make this stuff up.

Likewise, the National Electoral Council (CNE) the supposed bastion of democracy decided not to confirm the opposition's 112 democratically elected deputies. The new aforementioned judges, following the lead of the CNE, agreed that there had been irregularities in the voting process in several states and that the TSJ would accept the claims for fraud" in Amazonas state; How to Destroy Democracy 101. The newly-elected National Assembly of course refused to accept these trumped up politically motivated claims, cue stalemate, cue mayhem.

Clearly the authorities were getting a taste for this totalitarian business. Next up was the constitution. The CNEs decision to suspend a constitutionally legal recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro, under the same fraud mechanism, ignoring 2.5 million signatures collected by the opposition, was yet another nail in the coffin of Venezuelan democracy.

Meanwhile the TSJ continues to claim that due to the fraud claim in the Amazonas state, any laws passed (which they dont like) by this National Assembly can be annulled. Using this argument, the high court has annulled over 30 pieces of legislation, and the majority of resolutions taken by the legislative branch since it began its functions almost a year and a half ago. These laws include the Amnesty Law which ordered the release of all political prisoners who have been arrested at protests, or for such heinous crimes as expressing an opposing political opinion. Over 100 Venezuelans, mostly students, still rot in regime dungeons just for expressing the wrong political view.

Last week, Maduros cronies attempted to seal the coffin. The TSJ decided to strip the National Assembly from all of its legislative powers, and eliminated parliamentary impunity. This would allow the court to accuse deputies of treason against the homeland and prosecute them.

For once, the uproar from the opposition was echoed in the international community. Julio Borges, President of the National Assembly, together with a large number of legislators, denounced the decision as trash.

The international community followed suit with the brave and outspoken Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General Luis Almagro notably calling it a self-inflicted coup dtat perpetrated by the Venezuelan regime against the National Assembly, the last branch of government to be legitimized by the will of the people of Venezuela.

Even Venezuelas Attorney General, who is aligned with the socialist government, said the decision by TSJ had gone too far and was a "rupture of the constitutional order".

Maduro, having led this move, now panicked. He quickly asked the high court to review and revert the ruling, which it did. No one has seen the new ruling, and the National Assembly is still paralyzed.

Butseveral things are now patently clear to all of those who thought there were any crumbs of democracy left in Venezuela. First, the TSJ stole the legislative powers a long time ago, the last weeks shenanigans were just a means to formalize it. Reverting the official ruling does not save the judges from their crimes. They should be prosecuted and removed from their posts right away.

Second, Maduros request to review the sentence does not save him from the coup he perpetrated. He and his corrupt cronies continue to get rich while the masses starve, while imposing his disgraceful authoritarian stamp across the various branches of government.

And third, Venezuelas regime is antithetical to democracy and needs to go.

As this recent episode has proven, real international pressure works. Strong voices backed up by strong actions from the US Administration and Congress, combined with the immediate application of the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter, will provide a tail wind to the brave liberty loving Venezuelans who still believe that they too deserve democracy and freedom.

Martin Rodil is the President of the Washington-based Venezuelan American Leadership Council, an advocacy group for freedom and democracy for Venezuela.

View original post here:
The long coup: Why there is nothing left of Venezuela's democracy - Fox News

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY and the valued institutions that uphold it are under attack. That is the pessimistic conventional wisdom of progressives and scholars alike.

For many, Trump poses a unique threat to America itself. At the core of their fear is the realization that American democracy and its norms and institutions are fragile, strong only until the first authoritarian gives them a solid push.

For the pessimists, a confluence of factors has weakened our institutions: an increasingly reactionary Republican Party shielded from public opinion by structural political advantages such as gerrymandered districts and the Electoral College; a polarized political atmosphere with citizens split into echo chambers; and a corporate media that cares more about clicks than truth.

Put these together and you have a uniquely American recipe for the next democracy to backslide into illiberalism, as has occurred in Turkey or Venezuela.

Forgive me my optimism in difficult times, but allow me to dissent. Rather than suddenly discovering that our democratic institutions are deceptively weak, I suspect we are in the process of learning precisely the opposite: American democracy can take a punch.

As someone who teaches comparative politics, I understand my students concerns. The threat is real. But here are four reasons not to bet against American democracy just yet.

Democracy works. Theres an internal logic to its success. Democracy contains an imperfect but self-regulating mechanism: Good governance leads to re-election; poor governance leads to losses. Yes, the self-regulation is incomplete, frustrating, delayed and at times uneven. But in general it works. It is tempting to witness the well-documented dysfunction of the American political system and assume the worst. But we have seen instances of the process regulating against extremism.

The best example is Trumpcare, which died an early, humiliating death. Our judicial system forced a rewrite of Trumps draconian immigration executive order. All the gerrymandering and voting rights setbacks in the world will not save the Republican Party from large losses if the Trump administration continues down its self-destructive path.

Modern Republican principles and platform remain, for the most part, unpopular, appealing largely to a demographically shrinking constituency. The GOPs most important and consistent goal in the past few decades has been to lower the tax burden on the wealthy. This goal fervently believed and advocated polls terribly. Yet it remains at the top of the partys to-do list. Combine this substantive unpopularity with a flailing administration, and a very real correction at the polls becomes increasingly likely.

Trumps administration is completely incompetent. These are the Keystone Kops of budding authoritarians. This should not be surprising, nor expected to improve any more than Trump himself, who seems incapable of restraint or effective management. He has surrounded himself with people inexperienced in public policy and has left hundreds of key executive spots unfilled. The administration continues to leak like the Titanic. His presidency has suffered as a result. What should have been a honeymoon for Trump and the GOP looks more like the morning after an inebriated Vegas marriage.

Trumps scandals are only going to grow. Trumps conflict of interests, combined with his complete indifference toward them, suggest that he will soon unseat Andrew Jackson, the man who gave us the Spoils System, as the most corrupt president ever. Additionally, the Russian scandal is almost certain to expand. What was at first treated by journalists as an evidence-thin distraction has become a full-blown, legitimate story that threatens to drain this administrations legitimacy, if not bring it down in full.

Trump represents a real danger to our democratic institutions. But the United States isnt Venezuela. Its a fully developed democracy, which will prove to be more valuable than current conventional wisdom assumes. In a battle between Donald Trump and democracy, my moneys on America.

Matthew Hall

is an assistant professor in political science and geography at Old Dominion University.

Read the original post:
Matthew Hall: Don't bet against democracy | Guest Columnist ... - Virginian-Pilot

Tunis - The Tunisian branch of the radical Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, which calls for Islamic law and wants to unify Muslims into a caliphate, said on Saturday it was time to "bury" democracy.

"Democracy no longer attracts anyone," the movement's politburo chief Abderraouf Amri told its annual conference.

"It is time to announce its death and work to bury it."

Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in several countries and Tunisian authorities regularly accuse it of "disturbing public order".

Hundreds of party members took part in the congress near Tunis, praising "the caliphate, saviour of humanity" and denouncing "persecution" by the democratic system.

It said it was the victim of "attempts to prohibit and hinder" its activities.

Mehdi Ben Gharbia, a minister overseeing relations with civil society, said he had filed a request earlier this month for a one-month suspension of the group's activities over its "attacks against Tunisia's republican system".

Tunisia's government in September asked a military court to outlaw the movement, created in the 1980s but only legalised in 2012 following the overthrow the previous year of longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub has called the group "a party that does not recognise the civilian character of the state".

Hizb ut-Tahrir's 2016 Tunisian conference was banned for "security reasons".

Tunisia has been in a state of emergency since a deadly 2015 jihadist attack against presidential guards.

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Tunisian Islamist party says time to 'bury' democracy - News24