tragedy. is not the kind of freedom that new. how did you become an equally to islamist terror. you see. an exclusive report from a destroyed city. in the sights of bias starts. on d.w. . this news coming up on the program keeping controlled thailand's military to maintain its influence over the country. but. the free and fair and. for survivors and. often now the industrial accident in china. behind the country's safety record.

by british prime minister welcome to the show it's good to have you with us and has seen nearly five years of military rule and now it looks like the status quo will continue after general elections held on sunday up through all military parties says it's ready to form the next government that means this man former army chief and current prime minister. could carry on as prime minister for the next four years but the vote itself has come under scrutiny opposition parties have criticised the result as have been lection observer groups human rights watch has called reports of. very alarming. he became prime minister thanks to a coup now prime. chan actually looks to have secured

a democratic mandate for keeping the job his party which is linked to thailand's powerful military appeared set in a victory soon after partial results were released. we have we have indicated the principle is that. the party of parties said that. they are able to assemble the largest number of which should have the opportunity to try for the next government waking up to the news this morning this man said he was happy about the continuation of power but. i think the country is heading in a direction that prions has planned he will take care of the economy peace and especially corruption. this others aren't convinced though the electoral system favors the plan patcher out party all p.p.r. pay few had expected it to do so well. i was surprised the p.p.

oppy got the most votes. by the looks of the popular votes the p.p.r. p. appears to have swayed voters in the country's poor rural north but rights groups are questioning the credibility of the election. there were reports about buying there were reports about your equality is in ward cowan tabulation there were reports about intimidation of opposition party members. with criticism growing over the way the vote was carried out the political divisions that have afflicted thailand in the last decade could deepen even further. joining us for more professor john shit out somebody on cd from homicide university in bangkok professor welcome before we chat i'd just like to show our viewers the wider context within which this vote has taken place now following the change in the constitution in twenty seventeen boller months has a total of seven hundred fifty seats of which two hundred fifty in the senate these

are framed by an elected member as appointed by the military that means that going into this election the military already had two hundred fifty seats in the bag needing only one hundred and twenty six to reach the majority mach of three hundred seventy six. professor given this arrangement is it a surprise that the probably three along party has come up trumps not surprised at all i mean. the whole if for a process has been decided to give the advantage to the top party to cause the way teves so i mean as a type person there's already been speculation that they would somehow form the coalition government however the fact that they got more than one hundred say it's quite surprising for a lot of analysts who predicted that they would get lower than that but so that's

actually connected to the whole and even the playing field that has been created around the electoral process and i think that is creating a lot of you know. anger at the moment this is what human rights watch also alluded to there's an even playing field in the lead up to this election and also talking about some irregularities on voting day do you actually believe that this is true or is there something else at play here well the irregularities that appeared on the election there is just another if you sort of the whole process and me and before that for months you see the misuse of state resources for campaigns. and you see the intimidation candidates of the opposition have faced and you've seen. all kinds of distortion of groups in order to advantage to the ruling party but at the same time and of mining opposition

parties are you saying that in thailand the vast majority of people do not support the military led government i wouldn't dare to say that the society has been denied it for for a decade or more and i believe that half of the society believes in the establishment. and. right. now we are facing with the rest of the other half of the country do not share these beliefs right so the the who is favored by these half of society because the weight of part of society if you like and because of that they have a lot of popular support bought on top of that there's this. electoral wreck rallies that we've talked about so both being combined you have the electoral gains that are quite unexpected by the planck bush era thailand has had

a history of military coups i think the only think eleven's trolls who i lose count to be honest has this military government done something differently to the other military governments of the. twenty. successful. well i think we have to see the players of the military government in a historical context this is the first election and actually the court that oversaw the transition from the last reign to the new reign right so what they do is they try to kind of smooth the transition process and in so doing they have to sustain the ruling position. so the election is the sign for the elites to be able to sustain that political order yeah so what if they if done right is good for those who want to see the established order doing

well but not good for the rest who want to see change in the country or will have to give up their professor don't you know somebody from the city thank you so much for coming and they think of yours. to try norwich last week suffered one of its worst industrial accidents more than sixty people died in a chemical plant blast that flattened an industrial park and destroyed the city of young junks province the explosion was so powerful it registered as a quick dozens of missing. it was a massive blast. flattening nearby buildings and shattering windows almost two kilometers away. rescuers pulled this man out of the rubble of the destroyed chemical plant almost forty hours after the explosion happened the survivors hundreds of them are

recovering in more than a dozen local hospitals. my injury is heavier than those of my friends i was sitting right next to the window and shards of glass from a smashed window hit me our factory had temporarily suspended production and we were attending class to study suddenly i had a bang and a huge impact right smashed the window. outside this hospital the red cross society of china has been collecting and dispatching basic supplies for people whose homes were destroyed by the blast and people have been lining up to help by giving blood . i found out from the news that the blast caused many casualties so i rushed over as it's not far away i'd like to make a small contribution to the people who need help. this accident has stoked public anger further in china over the frequency of industrial accidents and safety

standards the exact cause of this latest enormous explosion is still under investigation but tan g.i. chemical the owner of the plant has a history of violating environmental. regulations. and that appears to be the underlying reason in a number of other industrial accidents in china lost a number for example an explosion at a chemical plant in the northern city of junk who killed twenty four people and injured twenty one others investigators said the chemical farm lacked safety measures in july also of last year a blast at a chemical plant in you've been in sichuan province left nineteen dead and twelve injured it's said the company had got it out in legal construction work and in twenty fifteen more than one hundred seventy people were killed in a series of explosions in the port city of ten gene authorities blamed incorrect storage of chemicals for that incident. and joining us for more is the double correspondent but he is billing in beijing material it appears to be

a common theme there are a carelessness a lack of adherence to safety procedures why does this keep happening in china. well the problem is not regulations the regulations are up to international standards for safety the problem is that these companies ignore regulations and that these regulations are often not enforced by local governments and this is of course because there is a close link often between these governments and the companies the companies are either owed by the state or they are big tax payers and for governments for the most time of the last forty years the most important target to meet was growth rate so in order to meet the growth rate they would look away at a lot of things and this seems to be the case here as well what has happened in the case of the latest explosion in junk to province that occurred last week what are

authorities saying. well the central government has send an investigation team it seems i cording to what we hear or what what is reported that . explosions have been happening there before one rather big one in two thousand and seven that killed eight people and that residents have been very worried about this industrial park the chemical plant was part of an industrial park that is now damaged as well. and a lot of people have been complaining that this dangerous potentially dangerous plant has been constructed too closely to a residential area however nothing has ever been done for my investigations by joining lists have been shut down or your lists have been. threatened not to report on this so we may be going to see a lot more in the coming few days on this but i did have

a correspondent material speaking to us from beijing thank you very much for that thank you. and there's more of those photos over the book. and be sure to check us out on facebook as well we need to know with pictures of the blast site any young child and the continuing search for survivors soon it's not about. what secrets lie behind these. find out in an immersive experience and explores fascinating worlds cultural heritage sites. you world heritage three sixty get feet up now. we make up

of what we watch as a whole office that under the age of five we are the civil service and. the want to shape the continent's future. to be part of enjoy now for youngsters because they share their stories their dreams and their challengers. to seventy seven percent of the platform for africa. could be if not become a second china for the world economy wants to strengthen its business partnership with hanoi even chinese companies are investing heavily in the ne but. also coming up some korean stuff return so that liaison office of the two koreas joint economic zone in k song. and despite global trade tensions at the outside to go break that's

a key german business for all of its north. i'm going. let's do business while china and the u.s. tussle over trade multinational companies a staking out the next big growth opportunity vietnam is just across the border from china it's one of the largest countries in the region as german economy minister paid to buy a points out and it's cheaper place than china to do business. there's a strong interest in working together here both from german and vietnamese companies there are a lot of tech and renewable energy firms who want to expand their presence here in vietnam. it's in germany's interest to be a partner to all nations in the region and that applies especially to vietnam because in the next few years this country will become more and more important. and the vietnamese economy continues to grow up one of the fastest rates in the world

we'll talk about the opportunities in a moment with our correspondent the first is report.