🇹🇭 A week and a day away, Pheu Thai and Move Forward are feeling good

Hello friends!

All week I promised a Thailand election update on Friday, but it is coming today because, as you will see, there’s so much to read and think about two hours at the coffee shop and 800 words wasn’t going to cut it. 

I’m really, really looking forward to the avalanche of reporting that will come in the next week ahead of the vote on Sunday, May 14. I’m keeping an eye out for more profiles of voters, particularly those in the north of the country and young voters who have switched from Pheu Thai or gathered behind Move Forward since the 2019 poll. 

Today doesn’t get too deep into the weeds of the politicking itself. I think it’s a hard ask to crack in on the minutiae of elections in most countries, but Thailand with its incredible political history and its limits on press freedoms for domestic outlets make it even harder to read. As always, I will happily endorse the Thai Enquirer for those looking to go deep. Similarly, Prachatai has been doing phenomenal reporting on the process of the election itself, especially with this report on vote-buying allegations that have emerged in parts of the country. 

In ~housekeeping news, today I’ve used links as headlines, which I’ve never done before. Not sure if it works so let me know if you hate it!

On that note, let’s crack in!

Erin Cook

Move Forward surges forwards

This week, my DMs and Whatsapp messages filled up with various links to polling numbers. In a review of recent polling for the Diplomat, Sebastian Strangio is not surprised to see Pheu Thai leading the pack. ‘In some ways the results of the poll are unsurprising. Parties associated with Thaksin have prevailed in every election since the 2001 landslide election win that first bore the billionaire telecoms magnate to power,’ he writes. But a crucial factor is also a conservative arm of politics in ‘disarray’. 

Together, Pheu Thai and Move Forward sit on a staggering 72% support in the NIDA poll. Move Forward is an increasingly heavy-hitter in that figure. Move Forward party leader Pita Limjaroenrat pips out Pheu Thai’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra as preferred leader with Pita polling 35.44% compared to Paetongtarn’s 29.20%. Thai PBS suggests the emerging cohort of Gen Z voters is driving the Move Forward surge, which makes for a compelling question for the decades ahead in Thailand. Millennials have already shifted the needle — what happens when Millennials and Gen Z voters dominate if their political home is with a progressive, pro-democracy party unafraid of challenging the monarchy taboo? 

What me worry, says Prayuth

“Everything cannot return to normal in one day. All development projects take time, but they need to be done for the sake of all Thais. The party and I will pick up where I left off and we will not stop until we overcome all crises together,” Prayuth Chan-o-cha said this week, as quoted by the Nation. He is very much tapping the nationalist well as polling looks increasingly dim for his United Thai Nation Party. “Some say Thailand is like a sick elephant. We must work together to make Thailand a war elephant again.” 

Progressives: take your pick

So, why are voters backing Move Forward over Pheu Thai? Fears that the heavy-hitter from the north could team up with military-aligned parties in parliament are a major push factor. “I’ll vote for the MFP because they stand firm with democracy and won’t collude with those involved in coup d’états. They have a proper policy manifesto that seeks to address many problems in Thai society,” Sirikanda Jariyanukoon, a 26-year-old from Nakhon Si Thammarat in the south, told Al Jazeera. 

Sirikanda went on to make a point heard repeatedly throughout the reporting: it’s time to move on, move forward if you will. “It’s time to have new people, new parties, and a new way of conducting politics,” she added. This point was made often during the campaign in 2019 when voters, particularly among the middle class, gravitated towards Move Forward's predecessor Future Forward — a new party free of the baggage of Pheu Thai and more palatable to those who did not want a return to the Shinatwatra x2 days. 

What’s really compelling about Move Forward is the combination of both savvy, smart policy built by the party’s battalion of technocrats in the making alongside its full embrace of the pro-democracy movement. As Koh Ewe noted for VICE (rip!) last month, Pheu Thai and Move Forward ‘notably diverge on issues related to the monarchy.’ Move Forward has not shied away from the very public debate of the last few years, indeed some of the key activists are running under the orange banner. Presumably, this makes Move Forward the choice for voters who support the movement — and how many are there that quietly back the movement but haven’t taken to the streets themselves? 

Now is a good time to link the Richard Lloyd Parry piece for LRB back in 2014 on Thaksin Shinawatra’s time at the helm because it is very easy, a decade on, to lose perspective on what the reality looked like. I’ll also be spending the week ahead reading Duncan McCargo’s Future Forward on the Rise and Fall of the Party, published by NIAS in 2020. I love McCargo’s stuff on Thailand AND I really love Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, so I’m looking forward to this combo. 

Coconuts Bangkok get ‘somewhat cynical’

Another excellent election primer from the Coconuts stable. If reading 1200 words of Dari Mulut ke Mulut is not your vaguely interested friend’s move, send them this. The explainer breaks down the main key messages from each party (Pheu Thai: “We’re inevitable. Deal with it.”) as well as what economic policies they’re offering voters amid a recovery economy and tough cost of living. 

The section here on Move Forward is particularly interesting as the party looks more and more comfortable at the top of polls. Coconuts notes “Move Forward is all in on family appeal, with a cradle-to-grave approach” targeting children and seniors with economic packages. Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan’s Palang Pracharath cops quite the spray in a blunt line titled Democracy or Autocracy. That’s an easy one to analyse for Coconuts: “The only reason this party exists was to satisfy the military’s appetite for prolonged power.” 

I was intrigued by the cannabis law portions of this primer. Cannabis in Thailand appears to be extremely interesting and a shape of things to come for foreigners observing outside the country (or from within those terrible rooms in Chiang Mai that are part high school boyfriend’s garage in 2003, part opium den). Few are going to bat for the law — indeed, Phue Thai has quite shed the deadly war on drug days of Thaksin Shinawatra’s leadership — except for Bhumjaithai’s Anutin Charnvirakul, who loosened the laws while Health Minister. 

Still, don’t believe the Anutin hype, says Bloom Siriwattakanon. They quickly noted that Anutin’s slashing of funding to social security pre-election undermines any sort of progressive credentials cannabis deregulation might buy. 

AFP digs into the dynasties

Southeast Asia is no stranger to dynasties, of course, and Thailand is home to some of the region’s most prominent — particularly in this election with a Shinawatra riding high. Agence France Presse takes a look at the Thienthong clan, who have controlled much of the politics along the eastern border with Cambodia. This is a really interesting piece about a family that has divided itself along Pheu Thai and Palang Pracharath Party battle lines. “Politics is politics. Family is family. We have different standpoints in politics but we’re still family,” Sorawong, a candidate with Pheu Thai, told AFP. 

Voters are often drawn to political clans as a sign of stability in Thailand’s shifting political ground. There are major benefits for the families too. Pasuk Phongpaichit, an economist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told AFP that dynasties rose during the upheaval of the 70s and 80s when families took advantage of the unrest to align with local authorities. “Once they became rich, they could establish power over the local MPs. They then saw an opportunity to enter politics.” 

Pasuk has one great line at the end of this piece that I think succinctly summarises the entire political landscape as it stands now, a week out: “This election has two systems. The one that has been dominated by political families, and the new generation of young voters who are more likely to find parties with ideology and long-term programmes more attractive.” 

The other taboo is ‘mayhem’

As we get closer to the poll date itself, I really appreciate that the region’s excellent journalists are turning to the question that has been quietly haunting the election: what happens if it all goes wrong? History shows us clearly that when the opposition wins, things never settle easily. So what happens if Move Forward, Pheu Thai and others win, as polls expect them to do so?

Reforms to how parliament works — particularly the senate having final say, despite any popular vote — means it's very, very tough for a non-military aligned prime minister candidate to rise to the top job. 

ANU’s Greg Raymond laid it out for East Asia Forum in the blunt sentence I’ve been looking for: ‘If Pheu Thai returns, then the seeds for the next coup, either military or judicial, may have already been sown.’ This doesn’t end on May 14, it only just begins.