 The BRICS group of countries has begun meeting in South Africa. What's on the agenda at this historic summit? Thailand saw a day of dramatic political developments. It got a new prime minister while a former prime minister from the same party went to jail. What's happening? This is Daily Debrief. These are stories for the day and before you go any further, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. The 15th leader summit of the BRICS nations began in South Africa on Tuesday. This is the first in-person summit since 2019 and many have called it perhaps the most important one in the bloc's history. On the agenda is the question of expansion and other issues including the role of what is called the BRICS Bank. We have with us Abdul for more details. Hi Abdul, thanks for joining us. Now Abdul, I know it's a little too early to talk about the outcome of the ongoing BRICS summit but it's being called the most important BRICS summit held so far. So can you tell us the reasons why? Well Pragya, of course that is the case. As we have discussed in the beginning of our discussion, ever since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the policies perceived by the rest, the group 7 countries, the NATO or USA or its European allies have made it very clear that they do not care about the political differences which different countries in the world have. They do not care about the differences in the approach which an individual country can have and they want to dictate their terms on all the countries of the world, their allies or otherwise. And this policy, if you see country after country has been, have been asked by the US and its European allies to basically follow its policy on Russia, put sanctions, follow the sanctions, even though sanctions are against their immediate economic interest. A large number of countries in Africa, for example, were prevented for a very long time to basically get their basic food imports from Russia. They were fearful that because of the sanctions there, they will have repercussions to face. So it is, it is of course, it has become much more clearer for the countries in the global south that the West is basically, the West does not care about them and they only want to pursue their own national interest at any cost, at the cost of third world countries and the developing countries or the countries of the global south and that basically makes BRICS much more look much more inclusive, much more democratic because it represents the set of countries. If you see there is one side China, there is another side India, then there is South Africa and Brazil, all of them are different, both in political terms and in economic terms. They have the different set of domestic politics, they have the domestic politics, the nature of their economic policies are quite different, is different from each other and there is no attempt made by the dominant countries within the BRICS, economically stronger countries within the BRICS, militarily stronger countries within the BRICS to dictate their terms on their its members. And so given this contrast between the global, between the West and the BRICS countries, of course, for the countries in the global South, BRICS has become much more important and much more acceptable and that is why you see the number of countries showing their interest to become members of a BRICS at this junction. So of course, the war in Ukraine has made BRICS much more important and significant in global politics. Right, Abdul. Now expansion, but that would come with opportunities as well as some challenges, just walk us through some of those please. Well, Pradhyaya, it is too early to talk about the prospects of if BRICS decides to expand its members. But the challenges are of course quite obvious at this moment. It is very difficult to handle a larger group of countries with the diverse interests, unlike the group of seven countries, the Western countries, which represent a certain set of common universal uniform values. The BRICS is already very diverse. There are countries like India and there are countries like China, which completely when it comes to politics represent two different cultures. So this is about the existing members. When we have more members in BRICS, it will be much more diverse and much more versatile and it will be difficult, it will be a challenge for to keep them all together on an uncertain common agenda. So of course that is going to be a very big challenge in front of BRICS if it decides to expand. Another major challenge would be basically to kind of create some kind of coherence in their policies when it comes to dealing with the West or dealing with their common economic interests. The existing BRICS is already again, as I said before, apart from the political diversity it also represents the economic inequality. That is on the one side there is China, which is the world's second largest economy and on the other side there is South Africa which is one of the smaller economies in the global politics in the world. So if there are countries like say Algeria or Argentina becoming members of the BRICS, this particular gap between China on one side, China and India on the other, one side and other countries on the other, there will be a complete kind of economic inequality and that may lead to some kind of challenges in future. One last thing, unlike in the West where the US is a hegemon and accepted by the rest of the European countries, the members of the group 7, and there is hardly any challenge to US leadership, the BRICS is much more democratic and it presents much more diversity both in its political approach and its economic outlook. And there is no one country which basically is in a position or is willing to dictate terms on the other members of that group. And how to, in that particular context, how to make decisions fast and how to kind of take a common stance on emerging global issues would be a challenge. So I think these are the things we can think of when we talk about the prospects and challenges of the BRICS in expanded BRICS. The prospects are quite clear of course. The last question, do you think that the forum like the BRICS has become more relevant considering the Ukraine war is on since last year and how does it make a difference to the summit? Radhya, this summit, the BRICS summit is called historic, he's considered to be historical primarily because of the two reasons which are interrelated. Of course, the first is, first set of reason is basically the larger polarization which is happening at this moment in the global politics, the rest represented by the group of 7 countries which is considered to be declining in its economic and political power in the global politics, is still trying to assert its domination through the policies of hegemony and domination. It is threatening sanctions, asking countries to follow its policies vis-à-vis Russia and basically trying to dictate terms to different countries and the countries in the global south are primarily in the global south are no more interested in basically blindly following whatever is told to them. So, if you see the second reason why it is called historic, of course, if you see the number of countries which have shown interest in becoming member of BRICS have shown in fact officially applied for BRICS membership. A large number of these countries, there are 23 countries which have officially applied to become members, there are 40 countries, these are the numbers have expressed their interest in becoming in the functioning of the BRICS and she see them see it as an alternative. There are 67 countries by the way which are participating in the ongoing conference in Johannesburg and all those these countries come from all different continents of the world and represent some of them have been very close allies in the past to the west whether it is Egypt, whether it is Turkey, whether it is countries in some of the countries in Africa, some of the countries in Latin America. So, given this wider interest among the countries of the global south to become members of the BRICS, BRICS has BRICS countries primarily China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, they have to decide whether they really want to expand their membership and if they want to expand their membership, how to do it and what would be the challenges ahead in doing so. So, since this summit will decide this fundamental aspect of BRICS expanding its membership and making it much more representative and much more global in its formation, this basically, this is the reason which makes this particular summit historic. August 22 was a dramatic day for Thailand, arguably one of the most dramatic in its political history. After weeks of uncertainty, the country has a new prime minister, real estate baron Shreeta Thavesen, who is associated with the furthai party. The man who founded that party, former prime minister Thaksin Chinnavatra, returned to Thailand on the same day after 15 years in exile and he was promptly sent to jail. Furthai came to power after forming an alliance with erstwhile rivals and ditching its earlier alliance partner, the move forward party, which was the single biggest force in the lower house of parliament. To understand this strange situation, the ruling party's founder is in jail, we have with us, Anish. Great, Anish, thanks very much for joining us, big development in Thailand. Now, how did this government get cobbled together and what does it mean for Thailand? Well, one thing that we need to understand is that this is very clearly an attempt to compromise by the furthai party, which pretty much, like the reasoning given by them, including some of the leaders who have pledged to resign once the government, then once the cabinet is formed, is that there was no other way for them, they're clearly showing a certain level of defeatism in the manner, because the system obviously allows for the military appointed senators, for those of our audience who do not know, the manner in which things work in Thailand right now under the constitution that was created by the junta itself. Junta appointed senators pretty much also have a say in deciding the prime minister. So you need to have a combined majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and that creates a situation where the 250 odd members were almost entirely at this point appointed by the former junta, pretty much decides, like has to say, in who becomes a prime minister, no matter how much of a big majority you have in the House of Representatives. So despite the fact that a previous coalition which pretty much existed of mostly populist and pro-democratic, anti-junta, anti-militaristic, anti-private parties, it did not really succeed primarily because they didn't have enough force to surpass a combined majority of both houses. And they pretty much also had to keep the move forward party, which was the largest party that emerged out of the general election out of this entire political equation. Now it is going to be an official opposition once the cabinet is fought. So this is a situation where the previous junta pretty much hasn't lost and complete power. They're pretty much back in the government in a new form under a different umbrella. And that is the kind of situation that we're seeing in Thailand right now. And it's a very odd situation because some of them, like many of the people in Kuwaiti, even the supporters, were pretty much staunch opponents of the military-run government, of the junta, of private and private even. And like the two leaders of two major parties that now will be part of the cabinet of the new upcoming cabinet under Sreeta. So these kind of political equations is going to be very odd because we're looking at not just like a couple of years of small time rivalry that we see in normal electoral democracy. We're looking at violent rivalries that actually led to a bloody coup at several instances, bloody repression of the Kuwaiti supporters, especially the red shirts that we know today who campaign for democratization of the state. So these people are now coming together in a very different kind of alliance that was never seen before in pilot. And so we need to wait and see how this is going to work out because obviously the Senate composition might change in the next year or so and that there might be new political equations. We also have a couple of cases against the current Prime Minister who allegations at the very least of corruption and impropriety, because he's a real estate mogul. So he pretty much has a couple of cases against him, but that most of which came up very recently in the past week or so very conveniently. And so there is a pressure that has been kept against the government as well. So disqualification can be on the cards if the military finds that this government is strained too far away from their situation. So there is a certain kind of very tight grip that the military, the junta has on the current government and it is very apparent at the moment right now. Now, Anish also taxiing his back, he's in jail. What are the chances, what are the odds of some sort of a deal being struck over here? Well, obviously, that Senate's back after months of back and forth on whether or not he's going to be back after his 15-year-old exile. So now he's definitely bad because he's confident that he might be out in a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. Right now there is, because he has already been handed down a sentence, a combined sentence of about eight years on charges of corruption and associated charges of fraud, many of which at the time when the charges happened he was not there to defend and pretty much were done under a junta ruled government and court system. So there were obviously doubts at the time about whether or not many of these charges were even had any kind of basis to begin with, but nevertheless he has been handed down a sentence, he's convicted, he's found guilty. All of that happened in a very, in the middle of his big fanfare, celebrating his return and so it's a very odd kind of situation as I said, just as odd as the government formation. So very clearly he pretty much began, like right after he came out of the airport, the first thing he did was to bow before a portrait of the monarch and he pretty much clearly setting the lines, the conditions of his return, clearly showing that he's pretty much banking on the current coalition government to bail him out of jail. It is quite likely that he will be sent into a hospital under police supervision in maybe less than 24 hours of his being jailed and so there is this very tacit understanding that he's definitely going to be out in a few, maybe give or take a few weeks, not more than that, he's not going to be under custody after that. So that is something that is pretty much on the cards, but definitely he is a card that might be used by the military junta at various points and that can also be grounds for, like the grounds for the solution of a party that does, that opposes the junta has always been quite shaky. So there are multiple levers that the military has against this current government. The Pakistan is one of them, obviously, Palestine is going to be, Strait of Palestine is definitely going to be another and obviously other cases and charges that can obviously be stretched in the constitutional court and that is going to keep the pressure on and we are already looking at a situation where this pressure is not going to go away anytime soon. So obviously, this situation has created a problem for, and we need to talk about this as well, problem for supporters of the Kuwaiti because a large number of them obviously very clearly had very clear convictions against the military government that preceded this current government, not just the elected one, so-called elected one under Pryut, but Pryut's Ku government that has been in power since 2014 and these factors are definitely going to change. We are already seeing pledges of resignation. We are seeing the chair of the party, Kuwaiti party, saying that he will resign once the cabinet is done. He's just there to, you know, smoothen the function even though he was the one who actually nominated Strait in the parliament, he's going to resign once everything is settled. We are already seeing the founder of red shirts, the one group that was the civil society coalition that actually led the anti-Ku protests in 2014 after the Ku happened and who were violently suppressed at the time. He will also be resigning from his position. We are also seeing former legislators, maybe some current legislators as well, leaving the party. So there is this definite clear pressure that they are, like this is obviously part of this contradiction that the government will be facing and we do not know how stable it will be in the next coming years. But, and that is something that even move forward party and other men, other people, other observers, other civil society activists have also pointed out that this does not really offer you any promise of stability. It only offers you more significant control that they should have more insidious control over the current government. And that is something that can, you know, spiral into a different kind of crisis in the future as well. So this is something that we need to keep a tap on, obviously, and we'll be reporting about it. But at the current moment, this sort of weird coalition is something that is definitely going to go down in history as something, whether or not it's a mistake or not, we can see, but definitely something that will be part of Thailand's history of something that we are happening. All right, Anish, thanks very much for joining us. And that's all we have for today. Thanks very much for watching Daily Debrief. We will see you again on Wednesday, our website peoplesdispatch.org and our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have more of our stories. Our YouTube channel has more updates on this show Daily Debrief. Remember to subscribe and thanks again for watching.