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| Prayuth Chan-o-cha (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Prashanth Parameswaran
Thai premier cautions that underlying problems need time to be solved.
Thailand’s junta chief Prayuth Chan-o-cha warned against rushing to hold fresh polls in the country in an interview earlier this week amid repeated election delays following a coup last May.
“In the past, there were very few coups that could solve political problems, because coups were followed by quick elections, sometime too soon. The rush has prevented underlining problems from being resolved,” Prayuth said in a rare interview with Singapore media in Bangkok on Wednesday.
In Prayuth’s first public address just over a week following the May 22 coup last year, he said that the junta had a timeframe of a year and three months to move towards elections. Yet as The Diplomat has been reporting, that deadline has been repeatedly delayed. Just last month, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam had told reporters that polls would now take place in August 2016 at the earliest to allow for a referendum to be held on a contentious new draft constitution (See: “When Will Thailand Hold its Election?”).
Read the full story at The Diplomat