After holding the largest mass demonstration in Thailand in several years on Sept. 19-20, on Thursday the student protesters moved to the country’s parliament to press home their demands for democratic reform.
Hours later, a deal between the sitting government—which is closely associated with the military, which ruled the country from 2014 to 2019—and opposition parties that might have slowed the marches fell apart. The two sides had agreed to move ahead with legislation that would allow Thailand’s 2017 constitution, which had been crafted by the military junta and is widely viewed as undemocratic, to be replaced by an entirely new charter. But something went wrong, and the deal came unstuck. Parliament kicked the issue down the road by calling for a month of further study, an important victory for the conservative establishment and especially for the unelected Senate that stands to be abolished under a revised constitution.
