Today, Thailand's winning party is blocked from power. Putin speaks out about the Wagner group, post-election turmoil in Guatemala and Hollywood actors go on strike. From to the early news, this is your daily briefing for Friday the 14th of July. Thailand's leading candidate to be Prime Minister has been blocked from taking power by military aligned senators in a parliamentary vote on Thursday, a setback for pro-democracy progressive forces in the country.
Peter Lingeromrat and his move forward party are also facing a number of legal hurdles in addition to the difficult parliamentary process, despite winning the most seats in May's election. The authoritarian party was swept to victory, having campaigned on making major reforms, including reducing the political power of the military, legalizing gay marriage, and amending laws that make it illegal to insult the monarchy. Following their victory, they assembled an eight-party alliance which commands a majority in the lower house of parliament. However, that isn't enough to take office, as the parliamentary vote on approving the Prime Minister is taken by a joint session of the 500-member elected House of Representatives and the 250-member military appointed Senate.
Now, Peter managed to win the support of 13 senators, but his total yes vote came to 324, well short of the 375 necessary to become Prime Minister. Now, this friction is largely because conservative forces in the country are staunchly opposed to any change to Article 112 of the Criminal Code that makes it illegal to insult the royal family and comes with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison. Anyway, another parliamentary vote is scheduled for July 19, where Peter can contest again, assuming his alliance renominates him for Prime Minister. Regardless, he says that he will not surrender, and will use this time to garner more support.
Despite this, the parliamentary arithmetic looks very difficult to overcome. To succeed, he'll even need to win over more military appointed senators, which is unlikely, or he'll need to convince lower house members from the conservative, military-aligned bloc, which also looks unlikely. Not only that, he also faces two legal issues that could set him back as well. The first being a recommendation from the Election Committee that he be disqualified from parliament for allegedly violating rules on holding shares in a media company while running for office.
And secondly, the Constitutional Court says that it's taken a petition against the move forward party, alleging that it's pledged to overhaul royal insult law violates the Constitution. Now, none of this is likely to go down well in the country, and that's especially because move forward's dramatic rise came off the back of mass protests in 2020 and 2021. So there is a likelihood of further mass protests if move forward is blocked from power entirely. Party supporters have already gathered in Bangkok during an after the vote in order to express their anger at the result.
And this is a concern for Thailand, a country which is relatively coup-prone. And beyond that, its politics are often dominated by a back and forth struggle between pro-democracy reformist forces and conservative, pro-military, pro-royalty establishment. In fact, the country has been led by a former army chief since the 2014 coup, but his alliance were roundly defeated in this year's election. This looks to be a turbulent time for Thailand.
Now, there's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine. Or just search for us in your podcast app of choice to listen along. Next up, Russian President Blaine Putin has outlined his account of his meeting with Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigogen and his fighters following the group's failed mutiny last month. Putin spoke to a reporter last week, telling them that he held a three-hour meeting with Wagner figures in the Kremlin on July 29th, just days after their aborted mutiny.
Putin told the reporter that he said to the 35 Wagner commanders present that they had a number of options to continue fighting. And one of these options was to see a senior Wagner figure known as Sedai, takeover as commander. Putin is quoted as saying that all of them could have gathered in one place and continued to serve. And nothing would have changed for them.
They would have been led by the same person who's been their real commander all of the time. Now, Putin claims that the troops seemed receptive to this idea, but unsurprisingly, Prigogen was not. Another interesting detail from this report is that the reporter asked whether the Wagner private military company would remain a fighting unit. Putin reportedly exclaims, well, the PMC Wagner does not exist.
We have no law on private military organizations. It simply does not exist, meaning it is not technically a legal entity. Next up, let's move to Guatemala. We're three weeks after holding the first round of their presidential election.
The country is currently going through a tense political crisis with legal challenges, suspensions, police raids and warnings from international observers that democracy is being undermined. Now, that first round of elections saw candidates from two social democratic parties qualify for the runoff with the former first lady, Sandra Torres coming first and anti-corruption candidate, Benardo Aravalo, surprising observers to come in second. However, legal challenges by the ruling party and their allies have delayed the certification of the first round result, prompting international concern. Then things escalated yet further this week when prosecutors move to suspend the party of Benardo Aravalo, accusing it of irregularities in collecting signatures.
Shortly after, the country's electoral tribunals certify the results of the June 25th vote. Then on Thursday morning, officials raided the offices of the electoral tribunal, sparking outrage at home and abroad. As a result, Aravalo's rival in the runoff, Sandra Torres, has said that she will suspend her campaign in solidarity with her opponent and his party. As of now, it seems that things have calmed down somewhat after the country's constitutional court blocked the decision to exclude the party from the election.
Now, this decision should pave the way for the runoff, which is set to take place on the 20th of August. The outgoing conservative administration has said that they will maintain distance from the judicial process and respect the declared results of the electoral tribunal. Next, the film industry is facing its biggest shutdown for more than six decades after Hollywood actors joined a strike by screenwriters. The Screen Actors Guild, or SAG, began their strike at midnight on Thursday, with around 160,000 actors thought to be taking industrial action.
This came after talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers failed to reach an agreement. The Guild is fighting for better pay and residuals, particularly from streaming services, and is also seeking to protect actors from losing out to artificial intelligence. Now, as you likely know, screenwriters have been on strike since May, and with actors now joining the strike, it's the first time since 1960 that the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild have held simultaneous strikes. In response, Disney CEO Bob Eiger has said that the demands are just not realistic, and are adding to the set of challenges that the industry is already facing.
Meanwhile, SAG's president attacked the big studios in a widely shared speech, calling them disgusting for claiming that they're losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. And a number of big names have already expressed their support for the strike. In fact, the cast of Oppenheimer walked out of the premiere of their new film in London as the strike was declared, with director Chris Van Oden saying that they were off to write their picket signs. And finally today, pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has agreed to allow a non-profit called the Stop TV Partnership to distribute a generic version of its tuberculosis drug in low and middle-income countries, following a campaign by the author and Youtuber John Green.
Despite the fact that tuberculosis is curable and preventable, it's still one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, largely because treatment is out of reach for many people in lower income parts of the world. Now, this came to widespread attention following Green's video, called Barely Contained Rage, an open letter to Johnson & Johnson, and got the hashtag Patient's Not Patents trending on Twitter. And after this controversy, Johnson & Johnson announced that they would be making a generic version of the drug available. With Green saying, I'm grateful to the Stop TV Partnership, TV activists everywhere, and Johnson & Johnson for living up to their corporate credo.
They really are putting patients first with their decision, and they should be commended for it. That's all we have time for on YouTube, but the briefing isn't over. As we're sharing an early-access look at my interview with British Foreign Minister James Cleverley in the extended ad-free edition of the Daily Briefing only on Nebula. That's a streaming service that we're building with a bunch of our creator friends, many of whom you're likely already watching.
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