Thailand’s junta is in “panic mode” over the economy and is failing to heal the country’s deep political rifts, former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Friday in unusually strident criticism of the kingdom’s generals.

His remarks come just two days after his arch rival, self-exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, also hit out at the junta’s nearly two years in power, an indication of how Thailand’s bitterly divided political camps increasingly see eye to eye on military rule.

Thailand’s generals seized power in May 2014 saying they would end more than a decade of political instability that has dogged the nation and dragged down what was once one of Southeast Asia’s most vibrant economies.

Former army chief turned Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-O-Cha has vowed to kickstart the economy and end the kingdom’s cycle of political violence and corruption with a new constitution, the country’s twentieth since 1932.

But in a speech to business leaders in Bangkok, Abhisit said the junta was failing to carry out necessary economic reforms, especially in the flagging agricultural and industrial sectors.

“Despite two years of relative calm and also initiatives being taken by the current government when it came to power, there has been too little progress even on this front and now it’s almost in panic mode,” he said.

He was equally scathing of the junta’s new constitution.

“I think it’s also clear that we’re not going to get the kind of constitution that many of us want whether in terms of democratic standards, whether in terms of a document that will lead to true reforms that are much needed or even on the issue of so-called reconciliation,” he said.

Thailand has suffered a decade of turmoil as pro-democracy activists and rural supporters of the Shinawatra family vie for power with Bangkok’s arch-royalist elite and their allies in the military.

Many supporters of Abhisit, an Eton-educated Bangkokian who was in power from 2008 to 2011, were at the forefront of protests against Thaksin’s sister Yingluck, and cheered the 2014 coup that toppled her government.

But even the military’s natural allies have begun to chafe under their protracted rule and Abhisit’s remarks mimic recent comments by Thaksin on the army.

In a speech and a series of media interviews in New York this week, Thaksin accused the military of clinging to power and said the generals had little to show for their time in office.

Abhisit also hit out at the military’s claim it was rooting out graft after a series of corruption scandals enveloped senior military officers.

“Given some of the things that have already happened, I’m not so sure they can say they’re better than politicians. And I’m talking about corruption, I’m talking about abuse of power too,” he told delegates.

Tokyo – Japan paused on Friday to mark five years since an offshore earthquake spawned a monster tsunami that left about 18,500 people dead or missing along its northeastern coast and sparked the worst nuclear disaster in a quarter century.

Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other participants at a national ceremony in Tokyo bowed their heads as did many residents across the affected region at 2:46 pm (0546 GMT) – the exact moment on March 11, 2011 the magnitude 9.0 quake struck under the Pacific Ocean.

The massive earthquake unleashed a giant wall of water that swallowed schools and entire neighbourhoods, with unforgettable images spreading around the world of panicked residents fleeing to higher ground and vehicles and ships bobbing in the swirling waters of flooded towns.

The waves also swamped power supplies at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, causing reactor meltdowns that released radiation in the most dangerous nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 and which continues to leave some areas uninhabitable.

“I hope people will remember us, that lives of evacuees are still difficult in many ways, including financially,” Kazuko Nihei, 39, said at a memorial event in a Tokyo park.

“This event is for recalling the disaster and co-operation among us,” said Nihei, who evacuated to Tokyo from Fukushima with her two daughters and now leads self-help group for mothers from the region.

The situation remains volatile in Fukushima prefecture, where the nuclear plant suffered explosions that spread radioactive material into the surrounding countryside and ocean.

The nuclear crisis forced tens of thousands of area residents to flee their homes, farms and fishing boats and at one point even led to discussions about possibly evacuating the capital area and its 30 million people.

Since then, authorities have brought the reactors to a state of “cold shutdown” and dispatched work crews to cleanse affected houses, sweep streets and shave topsoil in “decontamination” efforts.

Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the shuttered plant, admits it has only made small steps in what is likely to be a four-decade battle to decommission the crippled reactors.

Despite growing public opposition to nuclear power as a result of the disaster, the government has pushed to restart idled reactors, saying they are essential to power the world’s third largest economy.

Japan’s entire stable of reactors was shuttered in the aftermath of the disaster but Abe and utility companies have been pushing to get reactors back in operation despite opposition and legal hurdles.

Only this week, a court ordered the shutdown of two nuclear reactors previously declared safe, demonstrating the ongoing battles over Japan’s energy policy.

The disaster had forced resource-poor Japan to turn to expensive fossil fuels to plug the energy gap left by the shutdowns.

Speaking on the eve of the anniversary, Abe told the nation that it “cannot do without” nuclear power, though vowed to reduce dependence on it.

Abe, along with other political and business leaders, has frequently visited the disaster-struck region and pledged to help rebuild the area and lives of local people.

Expensive infrastructure, including giant seawalls, are being constructed and many local businesses have managed to rebuild – including factories in the region crucial to auto industry supply chains that suffered major disruptions.

But many young families have moved away, accelerating its depopulation amid the broader greying of society, while those who have evacuated but want to return wonder if they ever can.

“For each and every one of the people whose lives were affected by the disaster, these five years must have been days of hardship and pain,” Abe said Thursday.

Myanmar’s lower house of parliament voted on Friday to confirm a close friend and confidant of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as its presidential candidate, bringing the top office a step closer for the man expected to rule as Suu Kyi’s proxy.

The vote in the lower house for the presidential nominee was never in doubt as Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) holds an outright majority following a crushing electoral win in November. NLD candidate Htin Kyaw received 274 of the 317 votes cast.

A vote by the full parliament next week is also likely to be a formality given the NLD’s dominance of both houses, making Suu Kyi’s candidate a near certainty to become the head of the country’s first democratically elected government since the army seized power in 1962.

Suu Kyi, wearing a blue dress and white sash, was the first NLD lawmaker to vote on Friday. She is barred from holding the presidency herself under a junta-drafted 2008 constitution because her children are not Myanmar citizens.

She has said that she would run the country regardless through a proxy, named on Thursday as Htin Kyaw. He runs a charity founded by Suu Kyi and has been a trusted member of her inner circle since the mid-1990s. He is not a lawmaker, but was in the parliamentary complex when the vote took place.

Under Myanmar’s indirect system for electing a president, three candidates are nominated – one by the lower house, one by the upper house, and one by the military bloc in parliament, who under the constitution hold a quarter of seats in both houses.

Both houses will come together to vote in a joint session on March 15, with the winner elected president and the two losing nominees becoming vice presidents.

The NLD holds a comfortable majority in both chambers, so it controls both the lower and upper house nominations.

On Thursday, Suu Kyi’s party nominated Henry Van Thio, as its upper house candidate. He is member of the Chin ethnic group from the country’s northwest.

The party wants Van Thio to represent Myanmar’s myriad ethnic minorities in a national reconciliation government as Suu Kyi seeks to bridge the bitter divisions that are the legacy of nearly 50 years of military rule.

The military has yet to make its nomination public.

The president picks the cabinet that will take over from President Thein Sein’s outgoing government on April 1, with the exception of the heads of the home, defence and border security ministries who will be appointed by the armed forces chief.