Thai Politics Poised for a Meltdown – or a Massive Breakthrough

After twenty-five years of turmoil between the military-royalist establishment and parties led by—or de facto led by—former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand appears poised to move in a different direction. Thaksin is now serving a jail sentence—albeit from a fairly comfortable hospital room—and his party, Pheu Thai, is in disarray. Having teamed up with pro-military parties following the last election in 2023 to form a majority in parliament and done little to help the party’s poor, northern base, which loved Thaksin’s past populist parties, Pheu Thai has hemorrhaged support. Thaksin’s daughter, who was prime minister in a Pheu Thai-headed government, was removed from the job after bungling her response to the Thai-Cambodian border conflict in a phone call with Cambodia’s de facto leader Hun Sen, criticizing the Thai military and seeming to downplay the battle.

Pheu Thai is now polling at around eleven percent, a collapse from roughly twenty-eight percent earlier this year, and behind multiple other parties it had lapped in prior elections. It is very far from the party that was winning a majority of parliamentary seats in decades past. 

Instead of Pheu Thai, the government is run for now by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul of the pro-military, pro-palace Bhumjaithai Party. Bhumjaithai, however, has a modest number of seats, and Anutin’s government—which only started on September 7—is a minority government without Pheu Thai or the more left-leaning People’s Party, the other largest party in this parliament, in his coalition. Anutin has wanted to be prime minister for decades, and has now gotten his wish, but he only became prime minister because the progressive People’s Party agreed to allow him to become prime minister (while not joining his coalition) as long as he called a new, snap election within four months and agreed to a group of nominees proposing amendments to the Thai constitution. (An election is not technically due until 2027.) Anutin agreed to those terms.

As Susannah Patton notes in the Lowy Interpreter, Anutin is so ambitious that “he would likely not see reaching the prime ministership in the current circumstances as the culminating point of his career. Instead, the position is the ultimate opportunity to burnish his credentials and continue angling for political advantage.” In other words, he probably thinks Bhumjaithai can more than double its seats in a snap election and find enough parliamentary partners for him to remain prime minister at the head of a coalition.

This is very doubtful. Bhumjaithai is a known, entrenched party and Thai voters know exactly what they would get voting for it. It has its base, but to expand that enough to get to be the largest party in parliament, or even close, is extremely unlikely. In the latest polling in advance of an election, not only has Pheu Thai’s support crumbled, but despite Anutin’s elevation to prime minister, the four largest potential choices by voters are: 23.94%: People’s Party; 21.35%: Undecided; 14.20%: Bhumjaithai; 11.61%: Pheu Thai. It is not likely that anyone who would support Pheu Thai would move over to Bhumjaithai at this point, and Pheu Thai could well lose much more backing in the four months before a vote. Undecided voters that have not already backed Bhumjaithai in polling are probably not going to choose the party in an election. 

Instead, the most likely recipient of further defections from Pheu Thai and of undecided voters in an actual election would be the People’s Party. The party, called Move Forward at that point, already won the most seats—although not a majority—in the 2023 lower house election, taking the votes of many younger voters who had for years pushed, increasingly openly, for reforms of laws protecting the monarchy from criticism and who want to reduce the army’s role in politics. In 2023, the military-royalist establishment responded to Move Forward’s parliamentary success by enlisting Pheu Thai, the other biggest winners of seats, to form a majority coalition without Move Forward and with pro-military parties and others. Later, the Thai judiciary, which is famous for carrying out the establishment’s wishes, banned Move Forward and its then-leaders from politics for ten years for allegedly committing lèse-majesté, ironically by calling for changes to these same lèse-majesté laws. 

Move Forward then became the People’s Party, and in four months or less it could win more than the number (251) needed for a majority. This would place pro-military-royalist establishment Thais, already wobbling because of divides between supporters of the current polarizing king and supporters of his deceased father, in their most challenging position yet. Years of banning iterations of Thaksin’s party, only to have it reform under different names and win elections, did not improve views of the military and palace or impact elections. Neither did a 2014 coup or a constitution written after it by the armed forces. Instead, these moves only angered many Thais and helped boost support for reforms to the monarchy, while fostering even greater inequality in one of the most economically unequal countries in the world.

The People’s Party, which also focuses on reducing inequality and boosting the weak economy, is more openly vocal about such reforms of the monarchy than any party in Thai history. People’s Party members have continued to call for major reforms of the monarchy and army in the run-up to the snap election. Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, leader of the People’s Party, recently told Time, “We have set the goal to have the majority seats in parliament. We have to make people believe that we are ready to run the country.” He also made clear to Time that, in power, the People’s Party would make serious reforms to the monarchy. “Article 112 [the law against lèse-majesté] still causes problems in Thailand,” Time quoted him as saying. “And if we get power, we will fix this law in compliance with the Constitutional Court verdict. “The monarchy must be above politics … and still the core institution in Thailand. We must amend the law to reposition them and make them accepted by Thai people in the modern world.” Essentially, this stance means making Thailand an actual constitutional monarchy, with the monarch not having significant real power—as is the case today in many countries—rather than the faux constitutional monarchy Thailand is today, in which the king wields in reality massive power.

If it wins so many seats on such a clear platform that includes reform of the monarchy, the royal-military establishment could allow a People’s Party government and constitutional reform, which might transform the country. Or, it would have to find a way to this time destroy a party that simultaneously favors reform of the monarchy and wins a majority of seats, a situation that has never occurred before. That is certainly possible, via the courts or a coup, but it would be the most destructive act of lawfare or coup in Thai history, and would cause massive damage to the political system and the country.