🇹🇭 Decisive win is a new day for Bangkok

Hello friends!

A quick look this morning over the border into the Bangkok gubernatorial election. It’s a look at the immediate results and takes, but I expect in the coming days or weeks we’ll have lots to read about what it means for national elections.

The jubilation of Bangkok-ers online is super contagious and I can’t wait to see where this enormous development takes the city and the country ahead.

See you Wednesday (probably quite late, I have a morning flight to Singapore)!Erin Cook

Every survey said independent candidate Chadchart Sittipunt would win Sunday’s Bangkok gubernatorial election — the first since the 2014 coup — and holy smokes did he ever. At 100 percent of votes counted, the Electoral Commission declared a stunning 1,386,215 votes for Chadchart. The second-placed candidate, the Democrat Party’s Suchatvee Suwansawat, came in on 254,341 votes. 

As Ken Lohatepanont writes for the Thai Enquirer, it’s not just the size of the win but the spread of it. He points out that Chadchart picked up 50 percent of the vote overall and carried every district. There is no question about Chadchart’s mandate to lead until the next elections in 2026. The Bangkok Metropolitan Council will also feature many of his allies, meaning actual progress over politicking (ideally). Still, Ken wonders in his excellent piece, how long does the honeymoon period last?

It’s a new chapter for Bangkok, but the issues the incoming governor faces aren’t. Chadchart’s website included 200 policies he plans to enact in the city, Ken writes, but has dodged questions on how it will work with Bangkok’s infamously stodgy budget. You’ve got to read Ken’s piece, it’s short, sharp and a brilliant explainer. 

Chadchart has a long career in politics, including a stint as transport minister from 2012 to 2014 under the Yingluck Shinawatra years of the Pheu Thai government. He’s also a distinguished engineer and academic. He had been floated as a Pheu Thai candidate in the 2019 national elections but withdrew to focus on the Bangkok race instead, according to The Straits Times.

Depending on whose analysis you read, this is either the beginning of a new era of national unity and a calming of the deep divisions which have marked Thai politics for, uh, ever, I guess. No pressure, Chadchart. Others say no way, the conservatives in Bangkok were trumped so how could that possibly bode well for them in the national vote, which must be held within the year? 

“This election is a great depiction of the political landscape of Bangkok, and it will show whether or not the people are still in favour of the current government,” Navaporn Sunanlikanon, from Chulalongkorn University, told Benar News, calling it a ‘barometer’ for the broader mood. 

The Bangkok Post spoke to a string of political experts who all agreed that the vote was, at least in part, a message to the national government. Political science lecturer Phichai Ratnatilaka Na Bhuket told the daily that the result may indicate the old guard opposition might be out. “From now on, the Democrats and the PPRP may not be in a position to compete with the Pheu Thai Party and the Move Forward Party [MFP] for House seats in Bangkok in the next general election,” he said. 

Still, that Chadchart decided to run as an independent, rather than with Pheu Thai, helped him immensely in garnering support from some who may never vote for the party. With the long shadow of Thaksin Shinawatra still cast across Thai politics it leaves some interesting questions. As Cod Satrusayang writes in an op-ed also in the Enquirer (I love it, ok?), the Chadchart win shows the 2019 national vote was a lost opportunity. 

The cards are definitely stacked against non-military-aligned parties, but it’s not impossible, he says. The confusing political games Pheu Thai and allies played undermined what could have been a strong opposition coalition, Cod writes. Chadchart had run (also confusingly) as one of two leaders in 2019 but is obviously going to be very busy now. This leaves the party in a funny spot, Cod says, “it remains to be seen who PT can galvanize around ahead of the next election.”