Thailand Election: Will military and establishment let pro-democracy parties take power?

On Sunday, Thailand’s Opposition secured a massive win against its conservative rivals in the general election. The pro-democracy Move Forward and Pheu Thai parties won 151 and 141 seats respectively in Thailand’s Lower House, while Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s United Thai Nation Party has just 36 seats. “We didn’t leave any stones unturned,” Move Forward’s 42-year-old leader Pita Limjaroenrat told the BBC. “People have had enough in the last decade. Now, it’s a new day.” But will the military-backed government and the establishment actually allow the pro-democracy parties to take power and then hold onto it? Let’s take a closer look: Pro-democracy parties prevail Pheu Thai, which had won the most votes in every ballot since 2001 including two landslide victories, was expected by many to win. Founded by the polarising self-exiled tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, Pheu Thai remains hugely popular among the working classes and was banking on being swept back to power in a landslide on nostalgia for its populist policies like cheap healthcare, micro-loans and generous farming subsidies. But with 99 per cent of the votes counted by early Monday morning, the junior Opposition Move Forward Party had surpassed the Pheu Thai Party. The maverick Move Forward Party captured just over 24 per cent of the popular vote for the House of Representatives’ 400 constituency seats and an almost 36 per cent share of the vote for seats allocated in a separate nationwide ballot for the 100 members elected by proportional representation. Pheu Thai Party lagged slightly behind with just over 23 per cent for the constituency seats and about a 27 per cent share for the party list. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, said Move Forward’s surge demonstrated a major shift in Thai politics. “Pheu Thai fought the wrong war. Pheu Thai fought the populism war that it already won,” he said. “Move Forward takes the game to the next level with institutional reform. That’s the new battleground in Thai politics.” [caption id=“attachment_12596342” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Pita Limjaroenrat’s progressive party is popular with young voters. . AP[/caption] Saowanee T Alexander, a professor at Ubon Ratchathani University in northeastern Thailand said the returns were a good sign for democratisation. “This is people saying that we want change … They are saying that they could no longer take it. The people are very frustrated. They want change, and they could achieve it,” she said. ‘Situation remains unpredictable’ And yet it is important to note that the winner of Sunday’s vote is not assured of the right to form the new government. In July, a joint session of the 500-seat House of Representatives will be held with the 250-member Senate to choose a new prime minister. The process is widely seen as undemocratic because the Senators were appointed by the military rather than elected but vote along with Sunday’s winning lawmakers. Alexander cautioned that the current situation remains “very unpredictable ”and that the Election Commission could unilaterally affect the results. In the past, it has used its authority to disqualify Opposition parties or otherwise cripple challenges to the conservative establishment. Move Forward’s Pita would be a possible target for what the Opposition, from bitter experience, calls dirty tricks. A candidate from the military-backed Palang Pracharath Party last week filed a complaint with the Election Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission, charging that Pita had failed to list a stock shareholding on a statutory declaration of his assets. Pita denied any wrongdoing, and the accusation hinges on a minor technical point. However, the leader of the Future Forward Party, the forerunner of Move Forward, lost his seat in Parliament on similar technical grounds, and his party ended up being dissolved.

It had also been seen as a radical challenge to the military-backed royalist establishment.

While the results are a crushing blow for the military and its allies, with parliamentary rules on their side and influential figures behind them and involved behind the scenes, they could still have a role in government. In 2019, Pheu Thai won the most seats in the last election in 2019, but its archrival, the military-backed Palang Pracharath Party, succeeded in cobbling together a coalition with Prayuth, a former army general, as prime minister. It relied on unanimous support from the Senate, whose members were appointed by the military government after Prayuth’s coup and share its conservative outlook. History of coups And then there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room – Thailand’s military and its long history of coups. As per VOA, the military has for decades, used coups and court decisions to remain in power. The National pegs the number of successful coups since the country became a became a constitutional monarchy in 1922 at a dozen.

Another seven coups failed to take hold.

According to Nippon.com, the problem in Thailand is that it sees its political system as a ‘royal democracy’ where elections and coups are equally accepted as means of changing a regime. “It was originally conceptualised by the Sarit Thanarat military junta (1959–63) and has been iteratively enshrined in Thailand’s political system since 1978. If parliamentary politics becomes tumultuous and threatens political stability, the army carries out a coup d’etat in the name of ‘fixing the situation, ’” the piece stated. [caption id=“attachment_12599262” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] File image of King Maha Vajiralongkorn. Reuters[/caption] The piece added that the king bestows legitimacy to the military rule on the supposition that civilian rule will ultimately be restored. The king then encourages military to speed up the return to civilian rule if public sentiment against the military increases to an unmanageable extent. “This system of royal democracy allows for a change of government through elections but does not preclude coups,” the piece added. Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn, 36, was tipped by many to follow in the footsteps of her father and of her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra, and become prime minister if Pheu Thai prevailed. But history shows that three of the four Pheu Thai governments including those of Yingluck and Thaksin have been overthrown in coups 2006 and 2014. As per The National, another premier with links to Thaksin was disqualified from holding office by the courts for hosting a TV cooking show.

All eyes are on Prime Minister Prayuth, a retired general who led the last coup in 2014.

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Prayuth on Sunday slipped away quietly from his United Thai Nation party headquarters, where there were few supporters to be seen. A handful of staff sat beside plates of uneaten food as a giant television screen showed a live speech by Move Forward’s leader. “I hope the country will be peaceful and prosper,” Prayuth told reporters. “I respect democracy and the election. Thank you.” Punchada Sirivunnabood, political scientist at Thailand’s Mahidol University, told DW last year that Prayuth remains the establishment favourite. “He seems to have everything locked and connected. The constitutional court, the anti-corruption committee, the election committee — everything is in his pocket,” added Virot Ali, a political analyst at a liberal-leaning Thai television channel Voice TV. Some argue the biggest danger comes not directly from the military but from the so-called independent bodies. A piece in East Asia Forum noted that the military regime appointed members of the Election Commission that oversees elections as well as the royalist Constitutional Court judges that interpret the law and Senators who pick the premier. “Many Thais despondently think that stacked ‘independent’ bodies will ‘coup’ the election away from voters via party dissolutions,” the piece stated. The piece noted that constitutional court in 2020 and 2007 dissolved parties and cases have already been filed  against Pheu Thai and Move Forward. “The complaints are currently making their way up to the Constitutional Court. If the Court dissolves a party, its executives lose their status as MPs and are banned from politics for 10 years. Non-executive MPs could move to another party. But immediately following an election, these MPs might not be seated in the Lower House, which could affect the electoral outcome,” the piece noted. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News,  India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.