Buddhist Ethics and Thailands Politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Buddhist Ethics and Thailands Politics - Essay Example litical order in both the classical and contemporary states of South and Southeast Asia has been the center of critical religious studies (McDaniel, 2009). From the initial periods, Buddhism has exhibited a marked preference for monarchical types of government but monarchial claims are only one side of the coin as far as appreciating the connection between power and political authority. The political environment in Thailand considerably changed in June 1932 when a group of youthful scholars who had been studying outside the country and adopted principles of Western democracy carried out a bloodless coup that demanded for a shift from an absolute to a lawful kingdom. The then king, His Majesty King Prajadhipok agreed to their demands so that he could avoid any bloodshed and the absolute monarchy was abolished necessitating a transfer of power to the new form of government that was constitutional. Thailand is governed under a constitution that was adopted in 2007 after the coup that took place in 2006 where the king heads the state and the prime minister who heads the government is elected by the House of Representatives and is not allowed to serve more than eight consecutive years. The House of Representatives and the Senate whose members are elected through popular vote while others are nominated make up the national assembly. After the revolution in 1932 that brought to an end the absolute monarchy, Thailand has been rocked by intermittent military interferences, with nineteen coups and coup attempts in the years that followed (Farrelly, 2013). The concurrent military interventions after the one that took place in 1932 has meant alternations between military rule and more democratic instances even though the democratic periods were not independent from military influence. The coup culture in Thailand can be said to be the most critical contribution to the comparative debates concerning military intervention as far as politics is concerned (Farrelly, 2013). The

The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur Essay

The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur - Essay Example This low incidence of intervention seems at odds with the agreement entered into by most countries in the Genocide Convention of 1948 wherein they committed, under Art 1, â€Å"to prevent and to punish†2 the crime of genocide. Could this failure to intervene in the genocidal activities of sovereign states be rooted in the inability of the human rights movement to propel international action? The case of Darfur provides a timely opportunity to examine the truth of that theory. It is imperative that a definition of genocide be explored and established first since much of the controversy surrounding international inaction today are in many ways related to the very definition and application of the term â€Å"genocide†. As is best exemplified by Shelly’s wordplay above, the definition and use of the term genocide has been muddled by political stratagems which seem to follow an unspoken rule to never use the term at all costs. Instead of the term â€Å"genocide†, terms such as â€Å"ethnic violence†, â€Å"ethnic cleansing†, â€Å"acts of genocide†, and â€Å"civil war† have become the trademark of the politically-savvy. It would be as though by avoiding the term genocide, a humanitarian crisis such as Rwanda or Darfur would cease to be genocide and transform into something more palatable to the taste. We must thus resort back to the definition of genocide agreed upon by the same international community before t hey actually found themselves bound to make good on such definition. In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the following definition is clearly detailed.