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🇹🇭 Between the election and the governing comes the messy business of politicking

❤️ 🧡 The balancing act 🧡❤️

June 02, 2023

Hello friends!

Before we crack in on what’s happened this week in Thailand, a quick reminder. 

I’m offering 25% off new annual subscriptions for the next week and a bit. Thank you to everyone who has taken advantage, I haven’t run a promo for ages so it’s always lovely to see readers jump in. 

Nationals from Asean member states or Timor-Leste under-30 are more than welcome to a free year, just hit reply and let me know a bit about yourself.

See you next week!Erin Cook

In Thailand, hope is giving way to reality. The incredible win of the Move Forward Party was rightly widely celebrated across Thailand and the region in the immediate days after the May 14 election. But that orange glow could never last forever — now it’s time to get on with it and sure up the best options possible. 

Winning over the support of softer senators remains a crucial issue. So, too, does keeping together a coalition of ostensibly opposition parties without sacrificing the progressive edge that had so many voters flock to Move Forward in the first place.

How the Senate is going to shake out is a toughie. A piece published by the Nation yesterday reported a source saying some of the Prayuth Chan-o-cha (or Prawit) picked senators saw backing Pita for PM as “tantamount to betraying the monarchy.” Two cases currently before the courts may make it a moot point, the sources said. One would disqualify Pita but another would dissolve the whole Move Forward party. So what’s the point of stressing over it yet? Smile, love, it might never happen!  

Friends like these: 

The deepest fracture is over the House speaker role. Move Forward wants to name a cadre since they won the most seats, but Pheu Thai says: hang on, you can’t get the prime minister AND the speaker. Don’t think it’s a deal-breaker, though. Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew has vowed the issue will be resolved eventually and there’s no threat to the coalition. All working committees are continuing as normal, Thai PBS reports. 

Cholnan’s been hard at work quelling rumours of trouble in the grouping, despite the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding weeks ago and repeated public outings proving commitments on all sides. Red shirts, that is, some of the more vocal Pheu Thai supporters, have called for their party to ditch Move Forward and go it alone. “In his Facebook post on Sunday afternoon, Dr. Cholnan said that members of the Pheu Thai fan club have the right to voice their opinion, but Pheu Thai and its coalition partners are duty-bound to bridge their differences under a democratic system,” Thai PBS reported at the start of the week. 

How Pita is feeling: 

Move Forward leader and potential prime minister Pita Limajaroenrat is happy to take his time (for now at least). His party and their supporters represent a shift in Thailand that will take a moment to equalise. As Jonathan Head notes in his BBC profile of Pita, he’s a good 20 years younger than most lawmakers in Thailand — that alone puts him in a new class. 

“I'm different. We are not getting into a coalition to pursue a quick fix, or to get me the prime ministership. I'm in government for the people. The world has changed. You don't have to be a strong man, with toxic masculinity, to make sure 'people have to listen to me, and I have to be the one in the spotlight all the time'. I don't have to be perfect all the time. I can just be like a regular human being here in Thailand, riding motorcycles, eating on the streets like any other people,” he tells Head. 

Will it even be him?

Napon Jatusripitak and Termsak Chalermpalanupap at ISEAS have floated a ‘dark horse’ theory — could a Pheu Thai candidate end up on top? Pheu Thai came runner-up to Move Forward, but, unlike the new party, they didn’t rule out working with parties that had previously teamed up with the military-aligned parties which may give them a stronger footing if things go pear-shaped.

“In the event that Pita’s premiership bid is unsuccessful or the proposed Move Forward Party-led coalition collapses, Pheu Thai may seize the opportunity to propose one of its three candidates for the premiership,” the pair wrote this week. Real estate heavy-weight Srettha Thavisin is their most likely, given his business credentials and close connections to the Bangkok elite — including in the Senate. 

Pita also has that nasty little legal case to worry about, mind. Partyroom wheeling and dealing is only just one aspect of this game of musical chairs. 

On how Move Forward painted the town orange:

In a piece for the Diplomat today, Japanese political scientist Michio Ueda lays out clearly why Move Forward has enjoyed this massive electoral success. “To begin with, voters are dissatisfied with the military-influenced government’s pandemic policies and are growing tired of the ruling elite,” Michio Ueda writes. It’s a point that has been widely alongside discussion on the generational shift towards millennial and gen z voters. 

It strikes an unusually optimistic tone compared to a lot of the other analyses. “Taking a longer perspective, this striking shift in voter behaviour may be the start of a new chapter in Thai politics and does not necessarily indicate the beginning of further turmoil. Nation-building, political stability, and democracy remain in a delicate state in many nations, including Thailand, and the pursuit of one can impact the progress of another.” Fingers crossed. 

Reading list

Before he can win the premiership, Pita will have to defend his qualification to be an MP first.

The Election Commission has been examining a complaint against Pita for allegedly failing to dispose of his holding of 42,000 shares in iTV, a television station which has stopped broadcasting since 8 March 2007. But iTV has not been dissolved as a media business entity due to a pending lawsuit to seek compensation of 2,890 million baht from the Office of the Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office for cancelling their broadcasting agreement.

But the promises that catapulted Move Forward ahead of its competitors may prove impossible for it to keep. The math is against the party. In 2017, Prayut, a former general, and his unelected military junta put in place a temporary constitutional provision that allowed them to appoint all 250 members of the Senate, Thailand’s upper house. Together with the 500 recently elected members of parliament, these appointed senators will name Thailand’s prime minister. Even though Move Forward won 151 seats in May’s election and Pheu Thai took 141, their combined votes fall short of the 376 votes needed to name Thailand’s next prime minister. Move Forward has 60 days to form a coalition with other parties and gather enough votes to elect its leader, Pita, as prime minister. If its coalition is unable to reach the 376-vote threshold, it may be forced to work with one of the military-backed parties. The price of the support of such a party will likely be the burial of any discussion of reform to lèse majesté laws.

And let’s be clear, and let’s ignore the friendly ‘all-is-well’ BS currently pervading the political space, if MFP cannot get the votes they need then all options are on the table. And all options are being discussed.

That means that there is a pathway where Pheu Thai joins with BJT, the PPRP, the Democrats and the senate in forming a separate government. Pheu Thai would not be breaking any promises, they can say truthfully that they tried in good faith to back the MFP but they couldn’t get it across the line. They can say that they have to make this deal with BJT and the PPRP otherwise Prayut Chan-ocha and the caretaker government will be in place forever. In this scenario, if MFP chooses not to join this coalition, Pheu Thai could play the victim card and say they played ball but MFP were the new brats in the room who wouldn’t come together to oust the Prayut regime.

Given all this, it’s no surprise that Myanmar’s military leadership expressed alarm at Move Forward’s victory. Meanwhile, the acting president of Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government (NUG) was quick to congratulate the party. The NUG, made up of members of Myanmar’s overthrown civilian government and other pro-democracy forces, has sought diplomatic recognition from governments around the world as it challenges the military, but it has struggled to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia. A new regime in Thailand could remove a major impediment for the NUG, opening up opportunities for dialogue with regional partners and spurring greater coordination among Myanmar’s neighbors.

Most importantly, Pheu Thai needs to reclaim its political identity as a champion for democracy and build a reputation for accountability, transparency, and good governance. As it claims a number of line ministries as a part of a coalition government, it should work to make substantive reforms. While a coalition means cooperative government, Pheu Thai must find a way to distinguish itself from Move Forward as well. Pita Limjaroenrat is the current face of democratic reform in Thailand, but as attention turns from election victory to actual governance, obstacles to grand ideas of sweeping reform are ahead. As the public will soon learn, reform happens at a much slower pace than campaign speeches might suggest. Observers may recall attempts to make amendments to the 2017 Constitution. It did not go well.

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