The institution of monarchy epitomizes stability. A royal family ties a nation back to history and can take a long view of events. In Southeast Asia in particular, monarchy is about traditions and respect. Governments may change, new political leaders may come and go, but the respect and trust of the people towards the monarch remain unchanged. This boundless trust imposes on the head of the royal family the obligation to always be there for the people, especially in difficult times.

This is fully applicable to Thailand. The long reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej (1946–2016), known as Rama IX, strengthened the Thai state and helped the country withstand periods of internal and regional political turbulence. Despite wars and insurgencies in the region, the kingdom maintained its internal cohesion. Rama IX’s reign undoubtedly increased public respect for the monarchy. Thailand quickly transformed from a poor agricultural country into a prosperous state.

Rama IX’s son, Maha Vajiralongkorn, whom we call Rama X, fully carries on his father’s legacy. In 2020, during the massive student protests in Bangkok, Thailand saw an unprecedented event for the monarchy. Amidst political divisions and students’ tensions with the authorities, the king gave a brief interview to the British Channel 4 News. When asked about the fate of the anti-government protesters, he replied, “Thailand is the land of compromise. I have no comments. We love them all the same.”

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “compromise” as ” a solution to a problem that makes it possible for two or more opposite or different things to exist together.” This approach underpins Thailand’s success story.

Under the current king, Thailand continues to strengthen its position in the region and takes advantage of all the opportunities of a multipolar world. The country has traditionally relied on a “policy of compromise” to promote pragmatic multilateral cooperation while focusing on its path, destiny, and well-being.

Balancing between the US and China

Thailand’s successful maneuvering between the most prominent global and regional players — the USA and China  — is a vivid example of such a “policy of compromise.”

Despite their increasing global geopolitical rivalry, Thailand maintains a delicate balance in relations with Washington and Beijing amid their increasing global geopolitical rivalry. This is a challenging task, but it has a Thai solution.

Economic considerations primarily drive Bangkok’s close ties with Beijing. China has long been Thailand’s most significant trading partner. The two countries resolved most of their differences at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in 2022. During this event in 2022, the attendees signed several agreements, including a Joint Strategic Cooperation Plan for 2022–2026, and they worked out a framework for cooperation within the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. These constitute the “road map” for the economic interaction of the two countries in the future. Planners aim to complete the Thailand–Laos–China high-speed railway link by 2027–2028. With it, Thailand is expected to increase its logistics and investment attractiveness.

Thailand primarily focuses its cooperation with the USA in the defense sphere. Since Washington named Thailand a “major non-NATO ally” in 2003, Bangkok has remained the only strategic partner of the USA in mainland Southeast Asia in the security field. In particular, during the COVID-19 crisis, the two nations were able to ensure the sustainability of global logistics routes and supply chains in the region. Sustained cooperation with the USA in the defense has given Thailand a key role in ensuring regional stability.

New economic partners

Although Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, Thailand has lagged in certain macroeconomic indicators compared to its neighbors in recent years. A balanced and multilateral approach should also help to address this issue. The new government under Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin sees the solution to current difficulties on the “path of compromise” as well.

In addition to strengthening cooperation with the United States and China, Thailand is actively seeking opportunities to broaden its range of economic partners, especially Japan, India and Russia. Cooperation with these countries could help ensure alternative pathways for economic growth and investment.

The current government asserts that the economic recovery project will create 280,000 new jobs and help accelerate Thailand’s economic growth by 5.5%. “Our goal remains clear: Thailand’s economy must grow by an average of 5% over four years,” stated Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. 

Thailand sees joining organizations and platforms such as OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as one way to stimulate the country’s economic growth and enhance its international credibility. By developing parallel cooperation with such diverse associations, Thailand once again demonstrates its ability to find common ground and build relationships with both Western and Eastern countries while maintaining a balance between the great powers. At the same time, promoting the country’s economic interests and strengthening ties with an ever-widening circle of developed and developing countries remains a top priority.

In the words of Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa, “Thailand is unique in that we are friends with all countries and are not enemies with any country. We can serve as a bridge between developing countries and BRICS members and connect BRICS with other groups. This will strengthen BRICS’s negotiating power and help the international community recognize the importance of developing and emerging countries.”

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Welcome back. Ireland’s next general election is due by March, but few will be surprised if Simon Harris, the Taoiseach, chooses to go early and holds the poll in November. For Ireland’s friends and partners abroad, this raises three interesting questions.

To what extent will Ireland buck recent European trends and reject anti-establishment populism and political radicalism?

Will the election spell triumph or disaster for Sinn Féin, the opposition party that until recently was riding high in opinion polls?

And what are the implications for Sinn Féin’s ambition of unifying the Republic with Northern Ireland?

You can find me at tony.barber@ft.com.

The (partial) Irish exception

Answers to the first two questions require an understanding that, although Irish politics follows continental European patterns in many respects, it is distinctive in its own right.

The backdrop is similar in that immigration, asylum policy and the crucial issue of housing shortages are nowadays at the front of voters’ minds, as Fiachra Ó Cionnaith wrote in July for RTÉ News.

This is hardly surprising: according to Ireland’s statistics office, the number of immigrants — a category that includes Ukrainian refugees — had risen by April to a 17-year high.

Yet whereas in France, Germany and other western European countries such trends have pushed up support for hard-right parties, Ireland is different.

Writing in December after anti-immigrant riots rocked Dublin, Niklaus Nuspliger of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung observed:

Partly due to the long experience of emigration, solidarity and sympathy for foreigners traditionally prevail in the country, and there has never been a successful rightwing populist movement.

Still, in a survey published in December, 28 per cent of respondents said that they could imagine voting for a party with strongly anti-immigration positions — twice as many as in 2021.

Some far-right activists aim to whip up support by adopting the symbols and slogans of the Irish nationalist struggle against British rule in the age of imperialism. However, they remain on the wilder extremes of electoral politics.

Sinn Féin on the back foot

As a leftwing nationalist party with support among young people who have liberal views on immigration, Sinn Féin was slow to appreciate that it was losing touch with other voters on this issue. Jude Webber, the FT’s Dublin correspondent, wrote in March:

Some of Sinn Féin’s core working-class voter base has leached to small independent parties in recent months, including fringe groups opposed to immigration.

Partly as a consequence, the party had a disappointing result in June’s local elections. Now, as the chart below shows, support for Sinn Féin has slumped by half to about 19 per cent from roughly 36 per cent in July 2022.

It seems likely that, in contrast to some EU countries, the upcoming election will not send Ireland down the road of political polarisation and a legislature so fragmented that it’s hard to form a government (France is the prime example).

Rather, as for most of the past century, the reins of government will stay in the hands of Fianna Fáil and/or Fine Gael, Ireland’s largest mainstream parties. At present, they govern in a three-party coalition with the smaller Green party.

Even so, Sinn Féin remains a force to reckon with. For most of the post-second world war era, it was a minor party in electoral terms — abhorred by the mainstream parties as the mouthpiece of the IRA, which was fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin’s breakthrough came in the 2011 election at the height of Ireland’s involvement in the Eurozone sovereign debt and banking crises. In the last election in 2020, Sinn Féin emerged as the second largest party in the legislature.

Northern Ireland and unification

Moreover, Sinn Féin is consolidating its position as the largest party in Northern Ireland. Coupled with the destabilising effects of Brexit on politics in the province, this may seem to bring closer the prospect of Irish unification.

In practice, I don’t think this is likely in the near term. For one thing, Ireland’s next government will almost certainly not include Sinn Féin.

For another, recent polling suggests that more voters in Northern Ireland would choose to remain part of the UK than to merge the province with the Republic.

In the longer term, predictions are hazardous. The same polling indicates that a united Ireland is most popular with voters in the province aged under 45. Moreover, since Brexit, tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland have been acquiring Irish passports.

Irish stallion outpaces EU donkeys

How will the state of Ireland’s economy affect the impending election?

At first sight, Ireland appears to be in the pink of health compared with other EU countries. This could work to the advantage of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

A gathering mood of gloom about Europe’s economic prospects was reinforced this month in Mario Draghi’s clarion call for rapid, far-reaching reforms, including annual investments of €800bn in a new industrial strategy. “Do this, or it’s a slow agony,” he told reporters.

There’s particular concern about Germany, as outlined in this commentary for the Omfif think-tank by Miroslav Singer, a former Czech central bank governor.

Germany’s economic issues are not only tied to the exhaustion of its economic model but also to the fact that the European Union’s largest economic project of the past 25 years — the euro — has fallen short of expectations.

In Ireland, matters seem to stand differently.

The economy is growing nicely, inflation is under control, there’s nearly full employment and the government is amassing large budget surpluses (in sharp contrast to, say, France or Italy).

These surpluses are prompting Ireland to set up two sovereign wealth funds to protect public services for the long term, modernise infrastructure and handle climate change. It’s almost as if Ireland is more like energy-rich Norway than most of its EU partners.

Money, money everywhere

Ireland owes its enviable fiscal position largely to high corporation tax receipts, as shown in the chart below.

Especially noteworthy is the €13bn windfall in back taxes due from Apple after a European Court of Justice ruling. It’s an extraordinary sum for a country of just over 5.3mn people.

The Irish government, keen to preserve its special tax arrangements for the US tech giant and other multinational companies, spent millions of euros in legal fees to avoid receiving this money. But in the end, life is life, isn’t it? Sometimes billions just drop into your bank account whether you like it or not.

All this shows how far Ireland appears to have progressed since the dark days of 2010 when it became the second country, after Greece, to require an EU-IMF emergency bailout (with some extra funds thrown in by the UK) amid the Eurozone crisis.

At that time, the Irish Times published an editorial that referred to the 1916 Easter Uprising against British rule, celebrated as a defining moment in the independence struggle. The newspaper asked if this was “what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side”.

Not all sweetness and light

Despite appearances, not all is perfect in the Irish economy. Scope Ratings, a credit-rating agency, says:

The Irish economy remains highly dependent on a small number of large [multinationals] . . . just three firms contribute around 43 per cent of corporation tax . . . as a small and very globalised economy, Ireland is particularly vulnerable to adverse shifts in the external environment.

Then there’s the question of how to allocate the budget surpluses. Tom McDonnell, co-director of Ireland’s Nevin Economic Research Institute, cautions:

Ireland’s bleak history of procyclical budgets and their consequences should warn us against making similar mistakes this time.

As with immigration, the economy will provide much for Ireland’s next government to think about. But perhaps Ireland’s leaders will prove WB Yeats to have been too pessimistic — the centre really can hold.

More on this topic

Paramilitary criminal gangs in Northern Ireland — a report by Una Kelly for RTÉ News

Tony’s picks of the week

• Israeli spies have a long history of using telephones, and their technological successors, to track and even assassinate their enemies, the FT’s Mehul Srivastava reports

• Russian citizens who permanently reside in Latvia but have failed the required Latvian-language exam have started receiving letters warning them to leave within 30 days or face “forced deportation”, Marija Andrejeva writes for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The pleasures of writer-director Jon Watts’ crime caper Wolfs are numerous: George Clooney and Brad Pitt play dueling fixers called in to clean up the accidental death of a young, adorable student—prior to his demise, occasioned by his jumping on a hotel bed, he’d been picked up by high-powered district attorney Amy Ryan in a bar. Clooney and Pitt have reached the age where they know it’s useless to pretend they’re something they’re not. Their faces look handsomely lived in; the whispers of gray in their artfully sculpted chin stubble feel honest and earned. Like Lucy and Ethel in the throes of a falling out, they’re fun to watch as they bicker and crab at one another, leaning heavily on their silver-fox charm. Still, what they’re offering feels as comfy as the worn-in leather jackets they wear. And in this late-2024 movie season, if you find yourself wishing for something more—for another view of what actors in the 50-to-60-ish age bracket can do—look to the women, who insist on pushing themselves out of the comfort zone rather than settling into it.

Demi Moore in Coralie Fargeat’s horror-of-aging black comedy The Substance, Nicole Kidman in Halina Reijn’s May-December sizzler Babygirl, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in Pedro Almodóvar’s moving and provocative The Room Next Door: These big-name movie stars are pushing into new territory rather than just riffing on whatever may have made them appealing 10, 20, or 30 years ago. That’s a luxury no actress can afford, and these women know it.

Like lots of us, I will always love looking at guys: that includes Clooney and Pitt in Wolfs, both of whom are settling nicely into perfectly age-appropriate handsomeness. But as I watched Clooney’s character drive around nighttime New York with the silky strains of Sade’s 1980s hit “Smooth Operator” floating from his car stereo, it occurred to me that guys can afford nostalgia; women need to be modern every minute, or they risk being left behind. I also realized that months after first seeing Moore’s performance in The Substance—a movie that isn’t, overall, even very good—I’m still thinking about the shaky limb she crawled onto. There are no shaky limbs in Wolfs, though there are some creaky joints, and an Advil joke—because aches and pains are a thing men can joke about, charmingly, while women who do the same run the risk of coming off as crotchety old complainers.

Read more: The 33 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2024

In The Substance, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging movie star who—like Moore herself—has kept herself in fabulous shape. She’s also doing more than OK, hosting a popular 1980s-style exercise show. But she gets the sense that her boss, a leering Dennis Quaid, is looking to replace her with a younger model. Then she catches wind of a revolutionary new injectable known as The Substance, which stimulates the creation of a younger, and supposedly in all ways better, clone. The trick is that the original and the clone must switch roles every seven days, without exception, via some sort of mystery infusion. Elisabeth can’t resist giving The Substance a try, though she’s not prepared for how much she comes to resent her youthful, nubile clone, played by a vapidly effervescent Margaret Qualley.

The Substance devolves into a senseless jumble of body horror that panders to its audience rather than challenging it. Even so, Moore’s performance is naked and fearless in all ways. The years from 50 to 60 can feel perilous for women: men in that age bracket are often (though not always) viewed as more powerful and sexy than ever. Women can feel that way too, but the radical hormonal adjustments that hit during that period—amidst other challenges that might include raising kids, a marital breakup, or striving to remain relevant in the workplace—usually mean they have to fight harder for their confidence. In The Substance, we see Moore fighting that battle and looking great—but when her sense of self-esteem flags, as it does while she’s getting ready for a date with a nice guy, an old schoolmate who’s asked her out, we see how easily those undermining inner voices can triumph over us. At first, she looks at herself in the mirror and likes what she sees: she’s put on an amazing red going-out dress that looks sexy without trying too hard. But she can’t help comparing her fifty-something self to the younger Qualley version. She redoes—and in the process overdoes—her makeup. She wraps a massive scarf around her neck, clearly obsessed with wrinkled skin that only she can see. Moore turns Elisabeth’s increasing desperation into a hamster-wheel frenzy, and though she plays it for laughs, not pathos, you feel its power over her. In the end, Elisabeth spends so much time fussing with her appearance that she misses her date. It’s the finest, subtlest scene in a movie that’s largely a mess—but Moore gives it her all.

It’s true, too, that all actors in their 50s and beyond pour a great deal of effort and money into preserving their good looks. We know that Clooney and Pitt surely benefit from, at the very least, the best skin care money can buy. But one of the unfair double standards of biology is that men often look better when they’re a little weatherbeaten; unless women fix up in some way, even if that just means moisturizer, concealer, and lipstick, they often end up fielding backhanded noncompliments like “You look tired.” You can argue that we shouldn’t care at all—of course, we shouldn’t. But to some degree, most of us do, and you can’t blame actresses, whose faces are subject to constant scrutiny, for caring even more.

In Babygirl—which opens in the States on Christmas Day—Nicole Kidman plays Romy, a married past-middle-aged executive who becomes involved with a much younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson. He doesn’t gaze into her soul so much as stare right into the heart of her unspoken sexual desires—he’s got a kind of intuitive erotic clairvoyance. This both rattles and thrills her; his attentions become a drug she can’t kick. All the while, of course, you’re looking at Kidman, with her marble visage, and thinking, Well, thanks to any combination of money, cosmetic intervention, time at the gym, and good genes, she’s perfectly gorgeous. Why wouldn’t any character she plays land the hot young guy?

But that line of thinking misses the point. Kidman plays Romy’s fears and insecurities as free-floating, all-powerful forces that are divorced from how great she looks. Though beauty and money may make life easier, they can’t solve every problem, and an expectation of happiness is often the very thing that kills its possibility. Kidman’s performance in Babygirl shows that principle in action. Romy has no reason to believe that her handsome, attentive, theater-director husband (played by Antonio Banderas) shouldn’t automatically make her happy. So why is she miserable? People often act surprised when Kidman gives a fearless performance—how quickly we forget that, in Lee Daniel’s The Paperboy, she once peed on a jellyfish-stung Zac Efron. But that may be one of her secret gifts: her ladylike façade is a shell that she herself cracks again and again, and somehow, we’re always surprised by what she chooses to reveal.

Read more: 15 of the Sexiest Movies You’ve (Probably) Never Seen

Admittedly, we tend to reflexively lament the lack of serious roles for “older” actresses, though in a perfect world, those actresses would be able to make their share of old-school crime capers, as the boys do. Now and then we get one, a la Ocean’s 8, though most of our so-called serious actresses (even when they’re great at getting laughs, as Meryl Streep has always been) tend to put comedy on the back burner until their golden years. It’s our over-70 actresses—Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Diane Keaton—who seem to be having more fun with that genre. Maybe that’s because those actresses are long past the point of having to prove themselves. And performers in their fifties, particularly but not only women, may still feel they have so much to prove.

Even so, there’s pleasure to be found even in the most serious subjects. Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door—opening in the States in late December—is adapted from a 2020 Sigrid Nunez novel, What Are You Going Through, and stars Tilda Swinton as Martha, a woman suffering from terminal cancer who enlists a long-lost friend, Julianne Moore’s Ingrid, to help her die on her own terms. That sounds like a downer if ever there were one. But if Almodóvar is sometimes a serious director, he’s never a morose one—there are always strata of joyousness in his movies, and The Room Next Door is no exception.

Moore’s Ingrid is a mildly high-strung writer; at first, she balks at taking on the responsibility of helping her friend with this seemingly unsavory task. But as the two women spend more time together, she frees herself of the gravity of this mission and comes to see it as a way of helping Martha take flight. Swinton’s Martha, an accomplished war correspondent who has also raised a daughter on her own, moves through the movie like an Earthling who’s been in space for a long time, only just now realizing what it means to truly touch ground—she’s like a version of Bowie’s homesick alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, though the home she’s moving toward is a truly final resting place.

Yet this last leg of her journey—one that Ingrid, with all her fluttery-butterfly energy, will partly share with her—isn’t an inconsequential one. She’s stepping out of own adventure and into another, and because this is Tilda Swinton, she looks great doing so: even as her illness takes its toll, she wraps herself—with the help of Almodóvar’s magic wand of color—in rainbow hues that reinforce all the possibilities of life. Maybe this movie is a caper, of sorts, though it’s a caper with a capper. No one gets out of this world alive. The entreaty of The Room Next Door is to use every second wisely, and to help others as best you can. That’s a lot for a movie, and a duo of actresses, to carry. But these two pull it off, literally, with flying colors.

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At first glance Jack Schlossberg seems like your average Ivy League lunkhead. Tall and handsome, his lanky six-foot-two frame has rangy athleticism, he boasts a thatch of hair that geneticists should task with study and he can always bust a camera-ready, doe-eyed, heartbreaker grin. He’s urban, he’s part of the liberal cognoscenti; he skates about the parks like a real New Yorker in his singlet, cap set backwards with its peak against his nape. 

Take a closer look, however, and you start to see the resemblance: the chiselled cheekbones, the glowering brow. He has all the hallmarks of his ancestral bloodline. Jack Schlossberg is unmistakably a Kennedy.

John “Jack” Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg was born in 1993, the youngest child of Caroline Kennedy and designer and artist Edwin Schlossberg. He is named after his maternal grandfather, the 35th US president John F Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was his godfather and great uncle. He bears an uncanny likeness to his uncle, John F Kennedy Jr, the attorney, socialite and publisher who died in 1999. Schlossberg was a ring bearer at JFK Jr’s wedding, and shares the same proclivity for writing and wearing not too many clothes.

Schlossberg has degrees from Yale and Harvard in history, law and business administration, briefly worked in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and has turned his hand to journalism. He’s written for the Washington Post, New York magazine and People but his chief achievement since graduation has been creating content and cultivating his social media presence with a slew of TikTok films. Some half a million followers now tune in regularly to watch him singing ditties from behind the steering wheel, cogitating on the park run, providing “hot takes” about Big Tech and, increasingly, “memeing for democracy”.

Some observers might find Schlossberg a bit peculiar, his goofy brand of humour comes across as slightly odd. Watching him crooning feels like being on a Tinder date that you’d like to exit. And I think it’s a red flag he doesn’t like to shower, wash his hair or brush his teeth. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the 31-year-old has been adopted to help explain politics to the young and disaffected. US Vogue signed him up as a political correspondent in July, while Kamala HQ has been using him as an interlocutor to get the vote out and energise Gen Z. 

His content is now pivoting away from moochy explainer videos to find him chatting deep dish pizza and policy with Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, hanging out with swing-state senators and doing porch-side interviews with major figures in the Democrat community. His access is formidable: most Democratic elders seem to treat him as you might a hyperactive nephew — an inevitable fixture whom you are fond of but sometimes wish would go away. Schlossberg carries with him the golden privilege of being a Kennedy. He may be a smelly skater-boi crossed with a puppy, but he’s still a scion of the mythic Camelot. He got the chance to remind everybody of that connection at the Democratic National Conference, in Chicago, during which he gave a two-minute speech. He told the assembly why his grandfather was his “hero”: because “he inspired a new generation to ask what they could do for our country. Today, JFK’s call to action is now ours.” 

Schlossberg may lead with a unique brand of “silly goose”, but of the current crop of Kennedys he’s probably the sane one. Few things are stranger than the spectacle of his cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr’s late career in politics: the now retired presidential candidate and Trump supporter revealed this week he is being investigated for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago: he cut its head off with a chainsaw and then bungee-roped it to the family car. Following the brain worm, and the story of the dead bear cub (he planned to skin it but then dumped it in Central Park, you remember?), and an allegation of sexual assault (over which he apologised without admitting guilt), RFK Jr’s reputation for being a bit zany has now been reclassified as dangerously mad. 

Jackie Kennedy may have coined the expression Camelot to help mythologise her late husband’s presidency, but the myth gets ever stranger and more powerful by the year. One wonders whether a Kennedy can ever be an ordinary mortal or must always cultivate an outsize personality to live up to their famous name. Schlossberg is harnessing more statesmanlike authority while cruising on his hunky affability and adjacent fame. His schtick can feel as though it has been cynically workshopped to “play” with next gen voters, but at other times his uncensored edits seem spectacularly untamed. 

As a representative of Camelot 2.0 he ticks all the boxes. He’s politically aspirational, charming, non-confrontational and looks cute in a suit and in running shorts. For a voting sector that has been put off by the relentless negativity of recent politics, Schlossberg is the perfect spokesman: he sandwiches his easy-peasy calls to action — “vote blue” (hell, you don’t even need to know the names on the ballot), “reproductive freedom”, “don’t cry, vote!” — and then gets back to the stuff of life, like moonwalking in the supermarkets in his filthy dirty socks.

And, yes, he isn’t hugely funny, or even amusing, but he’s got that rare ancestral glow. Camelot 2.0 is the same but different and while our collective weakness for Kennedy connections might smooth his transition into more serious politics, as with so many of his brethren it’s hard to work out where the focus starts and the charisma ends.  

jo.ellison@ft.com

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South Carolina has executed its first death row inmate in 13 years, administering a lethal injection to Freddie Owens.

Owens, 46, was found guilty by a jury of killing shop worker Irene Graves during an armed robbery in Greenville in 1997.

He was executed despite his co-defendant signing a sworn statement this week claiming Owens was not present at the time of the robbery and killing.

The South Carolina Supreme Court refused to halt Owens’ execution, saying the claims were inconsistent with testimony made at his trial.

Owens was executed at the Broad River Correctional Institute in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday evening.

He was pronounced dead at 18:55 local time (22:55 GMT) after being injected with a drug called pentobarbital. He made no final statement.

His death followed a pause in executions in the state because prison officials were unable to procure the drug required for lethal injections.

Owens was sentenced to death in 1999, two years after killing Graves, after being convicted of murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy.

The day after he was found guilty, he killed his cellmate in jail, reports CNN affiliate WHNS.

According to reporting on his trial by South Carolina newspaper The State, Owens was 19 when he and Steve Golden, then 18, held Graves at gunpoint while attempting to rob the convenience store where she worked.

Owens shot and killed Graves after she failed to open a safe below the counter, according to testimony provided by Golden at Owens’s trial.

At the time of her death, Graves was a 41-year-old single mother of three.

Lawyers for Owens tried to halt his execution a few times, including twice in September. But the court denied each request.

In the latest attempt, lawyers pointed to an affidavit signed by Golden on Wednesday, which claimed Owens was innocent.

The court denied the request to halt the execution by saying that the new affidavit was “squarely inconsistent with Golden’s testimony at Owens’s 1999 trial” and the statement he gave to police right after their arrest.

Other witnesses testified that Owens had told them he shot Graves, prosecutors said.

Advocates against the death penalty and Owens’s mother also appealed to the state for clemency, which was denied by Governor Henry McMaster.

Hours before his execution, Owens’s mother said in a statement it was a “grave injustice that has been perpetrated against my son”.

“Freddie has maintained his innocence since day one,” his mother, Dora Mason, said, according to local news outlet the Greenville News.

Inmates in South Carolina are allowed to choose whether they want to die by lethal injection, electric chair or firing squad.

Owens deferred the decision to his lawyer, who chose the lethal injection option for him, according to the Greenville News.

Journalists who witnessed the execution said members of Graves’ family were also present.