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Supporters attend the Pheu Thai Party campaign
Thailand elects new prime minister as exiled leader comes home
Tuesday is a tumultuous day for Thai politics. Thailand’s parliament has elected a new prime minister, thanks to the Pheu Thai Party and pro-military parties – former foes – joining forces to block the Move Forward Party. This made room for billionaire ex-politician Thaksin Shinawatra to return home after 15 years in exile. Shinawatra ruled the Pheu Thai before he was ousted in a military-backed coup in 2006 and fled to Dubai. With the Pheu Thai and the military-backed parties having set aside their differences, a “super deal” between them has allowed for his return.
After landing at home on Tuesday, Shinawatra was taken directly to the Supreme Court, where he was sentenced for three former convictions – which he says were politically motivated – to eight years in prison. He was jailed but is expected to soon receive a royal pardon as part of the deal.
So who’s taking the helm? Parliament elected Pheu Thai leader Srettha Thavisin as prime minister. He will lead the new 11-party coalition that excludes the progressive Move Forward Party, which unexpectedly won the majority in May’s parliamentary elections but has been unable to form a coalition to govern.
The new coalition holds 314 of the 500 seats in Thailand’s House of Representatives. It promises to boost the economy, increase the minimum wage, end mandatory conscription, continue legalizing marijuana, and even rewrite the military-implemented constitution (but it will not touch the royal defamation law, a key tenet of the Move Forward Party’s platform).
Pheu Thai joining forces with military-backed parties is controversial because they were political adversaries in the past. Pheu Thai is being criticized by supporters for backtracking on its pre-election pledge not to join hands with pro-military parties. Moreover, many members of Pheu Thai’s base, known as the “Red Shirts,” died in political violence as they defended Pheu Thai from the pro-military parties trying to eviscerate Shinawatra’s power in 2006. The leader of the Red Shirts resigned on Monday in protest.
Who else will be upset? The millions of young Thai voters who delivered a win to the progressive Move Forward Party back in May – and a rebuke to the military-linked parties in charge – will be angered by today’s events. With their electoral choice upended by political wrangling, street protests by the progressive movement are likely.
Move Forward Party, Pheu Thai party, and coalition partner leaders sign an MOU in Bangkok, Thailand.
Uncertain Thai premiership vote
On Monday, the Thai parliament will meet for the first time since the May 14 election to pick the next prime minister. Whoever gets the nod, some people won't be happy about it in a country with a checkered history of political turmoil: shaky governments, colorful protests, and military takeovers.
The candidate with the most support is Pita Limjaroenrat, the baby-faced leader of the progressive Move Forward Party, which won the most seats in the election. But a multi-party coalition headed by the MFP doesn't have enough votes to overcome a de facto army veto in the Senate. For more on this, read our primer.
If by some miracle Pita finds the votes to clinch the premiership, the ruling generals will look for ways to oust him, such as using the loyal courts to disqualify him on bogus charges. (The ultra-conservative, royalist elite views Pita as a spoiled brat who wants to kneecap the king's power.)
But the most likely outcome is either an army-backed minority government or the Pheu Thai (For Thais) party — supported by influential ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra — cutting a deal with pro-establishment forces. That might include a pardon for Thaksin to return to Thailand after 15 years in exile.
Either scenario will surely trigger mass protests led by young people, who overwhelmingly voted for Pita and took to the streets in 2020-2021 to challenge the political elite. And if there’s violence, remember the Thai army is the world champion of coups.Move Forward Party leader and Thai PM candidate Pita Limjaroenrat during the press conference of coalition parties in Bangkok.
Election body probes Thai PM hopeful
On Monday, Thailand's electoral commission announced it is investigating whether PM frontrunner Pita Limjaroenrat was qualified to run in last month's general election.
Huh? Shouldn't that have been settled before the vote? Not in Thailand, where the army-backed political establishment has perfected the art of gaming the system to stay in power when it loses at the ballot box.
Pita is accused of being knowingly unfit to run for MP because he owned shares in a media firm, which is verboten under Thai election rules. But the leader of the progressive Move Forward Party argues that those shares were not under his name and the media firm has been inactive since 2007.
Still, no matter how ludicrous the charge might sound, keep in mind this is Thailand, where in 2008 a prime minister was (legally) removed for ... hosting a cooking show.
If Pita gets disqualified, political turmoil is all but assured in the Land of Smiles. In early 2020, the election fraud conviction of the head of Future Forward — basically the MFP before it rebranded — triggered a youth-led protest movement that forever changed Thai politics by calling to reform the once-untouchable monarchy.Move Forward Party leader and PM candidate Pita Limjaroenrat celebrate the party's election results in Bangkok, Thailand.
A guide to Thailand’s messy post-election politics
On Sunday, Thai voters shocked the ruling pro-military establishment by delivering a landslide victory for the democratic opposition. Okay, so that means the generals are out, right?
Nope.
For one thing, the men in uniform pre-rigged the election. After taking over in a 2014 coup, they rewrote the constitution to appoint the entire 250-member Senate, which picks the prime minister along with 500 MPs elected by popular vote. To form a government without the army’s consent, you need a majority of at least 376 seats, equivalent to three-quarters of the lower chamber.
Thailand’s military, with a long and rather successful history of intervening in politics, did this to ensure they would still call the shots no matter how their coalition performed at the ballot box. (Even before tweaking the charter, the country’s fragmented parliament and weak party system made it difficult for any party to win an outright majority.)
Regardless, the frontrunner for PM is 42-year-old Pita Limjaroenrat, a telegenic, English-speaking businessman whose progressive Move Forward Party got the most votes and seats. Against all odds, MFP bested the Pheu Thai (For Thais) Party backed by exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, whose parties had won every single Thai election since he swept to power in 2001.
MFP and Pheu Thai — now captained by Thaksin’s millennial daughter, Paetongtarn — quickly announced a six-party coalition to form a government. But together they only have 309 seats, 67 shy of the minimum threshold to override the army’s likely Senate veto.
To get that supermajority, the opposition might reach out to an unlikely kingmaker: the Bhumjaithai or “Thai Pride Party,” which came in third with 71 MPs. Bhumjaithai’s claim to fame is having led the charge for Thailand to legalize recreational cannabis, which the government actually did last year despite the country being famous for its very tough anti-drug laws.
Unfortunately, being pro-weed puts Bhumjaithai at odds with Pheu Thai, whose socially conservative rural base hates stoners and supported Thaksin’s bloody war on drugs in the early 2000s. Similarly, Bhumjaithai is also an establishment royalist party that won’t allow MFP to reform Thailand’s draconian lèse-majesté laws, popularly known as “112” for the article in the criminal code that punishes offenses to the king with up to 15 years behind bars.
What’s more, even if these three parties cut a deal, a very big if, the generals won’t leave without putting up a (political) fight.
The Thai army has ways to hold onto power despite losing big in the election. Its political allies could seek to dissolve MFP on bogus election law violation charges, as they did with its predecessor, Future Forward. (That disqualification triggered the 2020-2021 youth-led protests that rocked Thailand and turned out many first-time voters to back MFP.)
And if that doesn’t pan out, the generals might try to use the judiciary to remove the premier on even more ludicrous grounds. After all, the constitutional court once fried a sitting PM for … hosting a cooking show.
Still, if the generals pull a fast one, there could be major trouble ahead. How would you feel if you voted for change, yet got more of the same?
If anything is certain in Thai politics, it’s that violent street protests are sooner or later followed by a military coup, with the king’s blessing of course. And that’ll plunge the Land of Smiles deeper into political Groundhog Day.
Thailand votes for change
Opposition parties won Thailand's general election, according to a provisional tally released Monday. It was a particularly good day for the progressive Move Forward Party, which promised to curb the power of the army and decentralize the country’s Byzantine bureaucracy. MFP now looks set to win at least 151 seats in the 500-seat lower house.
Crucially, the party’s leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, has vowed to reform the country’s draconian lèse-majesté law, under which criticism of the monarchy can result in a whopping 15-year prison sentence. That message resonated with millions of first-time voters following mass youth-led protests that for the first time raised the issue in 2020-2021.
For more on what’s at stake in this election and why it’s all about the Thai youth this time around, see our explainer here.
Meanwhile, the Pheu Thai party – headed by the daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, who fled Thailand in 2008, two years after being deposed in a coup – looks set to come in second. Pheu Thai and MFP have agreed to form a coalition government to, well, move forward.
Though pro-military parties got walloped in the election, they could still come out triumphant thanks in large part to a constitutional reform that allows the military, which seized power in a coup in 2014, to tap all 250 members of the Senate. (The PM is chosen by both houses of parliament and the anti-military parties fell short of the supermajority needed to override a Senate veto.)
MFP owes its success to the Gen Z voters who back its liberal agenda. Still, given the outsized power of the military in Thai politics, there will be lots of wrangling in the weeks ahead to elect a PM and form a government.
Ahead of Thai election, fed-up youth still hope for change they probably won't get
A Thai schoolgirl walks into a classroom. She wears the standard uniform of a white shirt and dark skirt, but something is not right. Her hands are covered in tattoos, bright-red highlights streak through her jet-black hair. On the walls are posters of missing student activists.
When a seedy male teacher with glowing eyes scolds her, a third eye forms on her forehead as she transforms into a fire-breathing naga, a powerful mythological creature that most Thais believe really exists. She sings:
Jump off my Bangkok! Get off my Bangkok!
The music video, by the 30-year-old Thai singer-songwriter Pyra, is a tribute to the defiance and frustrations of an entire generation of young people, fed up with an ossified establishment, dominated by the military and the monarchy, that just won’t let go of power.
With elections coming up Sunday, few are optimistic that the vote will put the so-called Land of Smiles on a happier path after years of political upheaval and economic stagnation.
Three years ago, Pyra, whose real name is Peeralada Sukawat, was one of tens of thousands of young Thais who took to the streets to demand change in the biggest youth-led rallies Thailand has ever seen.
The protests rocked Thai politics because the students wanted nothing short of pro-democracy regime change: a new government, a fresh constitution that gave non-soldiers a chance at real power, and limits on the power of the king — until then a taboo topic in a country with some of the strictest lèse-majesté laws in the world.
"They want to see a progressive Thailand," says Janjira Soombatponsiri, an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. "They want to see equality, they want to see a welfare state. They want to see all things that are so unfamiliar to the older generation."
The crackdown was brutal. Hundreds of the protesters are now behind bars, many serving lengthy jail terms for sedition or offending the monarchy. Those who remain free are mostly too scared to speak out — even online, where royalist trolls target anyone who dares criticize the military or the monarchy.
A year ago, Pyra moved to London for more freedom to express herself through her music, which she defines as “dystopian pop.” She’s glad to be away from the Orwellian repression that she believes youth in her homeland now live under.
"I left because censorship is not good for my job as an artist," she says. "I need to be able to think outside the box, run around like the world [is] your playground. You cannot be limited by a box created by the government."
The fallout from the 2020-2021 protests hangs like a shadow over the May 14 election, in which pro-democracy opposition forces will compete against a ruling coalition of parties that are backed by the army and loyal to the king. Although the opposition is leading in the polls by a wide margin, even a landslide victory wouldn’t guarantee a path to power.
The current government is headed by PM Prayuth Chan-ocha, a now-retired general who as army chief staged a coup in 2014. Two years later, his junta rewrote the constitution to make it almost impossible to form a government that the army doesn’t like.
Under the current rules, the army appoints nearly all 250 of Thailand’s senators, who elect the prime minister along with 500 popularly elected MPs. No surprise then that in the last election in 2019, Prayuth was able to keep his job despite the opposition winning way more seats than his party.
The math is simple: Just to have a shot at the premiership, a pro-democracy party needs to get three times as many MPs elected as a party supported by the men in uniform in the upper chamber.
Despite the odds being stacked against them, the opposition hopes that young voters will still turn out in high enough numbers to deliver a resounding victory that the generals can’t undo. The kids may not be all right, but they are — at least potentially — a huge part of the electoral equation this Sunday.
For the first time ever, Thais aged 18-25 could be a larger voting bloc than seniors, who overwhelmingly support the army and the crown. That gives first-time voters unprecedented attention by those vowing to unseat the generals.
Five years ago, young people came out in droves to vote for the upstart Future Forward party, which promised to clip the army's power, decentralize the bureaucracy, and tackle inequality. It shocked the political class by coming in third, but a year later the party was disqualified for violating campaign finance laws.
The progressives have now rebranded as Move Forward, following the Thai electoral politics playbook: If you get dissolved, just change your party name and run again!
Another contender is Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, a populist billionaire who recently announced he would soon return to Thailand after 17 years in self-imposed "exile" (Thaksin fled Thailand in 2008, two years after being deposed in a coup, and faces up to a decade in jail for a slew of charges he claims were politically motivated).
But despite her youth — at 36, Paetongtarn would be Thailand’s youngest PM ever — she isn’t connecting well with younger voters. Many probably wonder if she’s just an empty vessel for her dad, as her aunt Yingluck was often perceived as before she too was ousted in 2014 by Prayuth and his buddies.
(Not-so-fun fact: Thailand has seen more successful coups, 13, than any other country since World War II.)
Still, why should Gen Zers vote for parties that treated the protesters like spoiled brats? "The political establishment has done nothing for the young people that risked their lives and spent time in jail," says Aim Sinpeng, a senior lecturer and expert on Thai politics at the University of Sydney.
She also recalls how some politicians showed their true colors with patronizing and sexist comments lobbed at female protesters, like "Why don't you stay home and help your mom wash the dishes instead of coming out and talk stuff?” or “You need to be a good girl, so stay home and off Twitter."
For Sinpeng, many of the protesters showed they had more guts then the opposition parties now wooing their generation for votes.
"These young people were not telling their parents they're going to the protests. They understood that their involvement can rip their families apart because they were going against their parent's wishes," she explains. "But they did it anyway, and that takes courage in a country like Thailand, where you can have real consequences for just standing by and saying nothing."
(By that Sinpeng means being a witness to but not reporting lèse-majesté, which believe it or not is the same crime as insulting the king yourself under the Thai criminal code.)
At the heart of the youth disillusionment is a deep generational divide in Thailand, says Soombatponsiri.
"Young people see Thailand in a completely different light. They question the notion of the Thai nation, what they've learned in school about Thai history and Thai identity," she adds. For its part, the royalist establishment is pushing back by glorifying the army and the king as well as portraying the youth as angry and privileged.
Pyra agrees.
"Within the younger generation, there is that fire to overthrow the older generation," she says. "Change is just a matter of time, but it's [only] gonna happen after the older generation dies out."
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra and the Pheu Thai party's prime ministerial candidate, at a campaign event in Bangkok.
Thaksin’s shadow looms large over upcoming Thai election
Former PM Thaksin Shinawatra remains a powerful force in Thai politics 17 years after the military ousted the billionaire businessman from office and drove him out of the country. His party, Pheu Thai (or its predecessors), has won the largest number of seats in every election since 2001 with its populist appeals to the rural poor. But it has been twice ousted from power via military coups. In addition to Thaksin (Thais go by their given name), his sister Yingluck suffered a similar fate, in 2014.
Ahead of the May 14 elections for the House of Representatives, Pheu Thai is getting a fresh boost from the next generation: Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn, 36, has emerged as an energetic campaigner and one of the main contenders for prime minister. Yet Pheu Thai faces a battle obtaining the nation’s top job given the conservative establishment’s dominance of the political system.
We asked Eurasia Group expert Peter Mumford to explain why.
Who are the main candidates and parties running on the establishment side?
United Thai Nation, led by 2014 coup-leader-turned-PM Prayut Chan-o-cha, and Palang Pracharat Party, led by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan (both military-linked parties), as well as the Democrat Party are the main parties of the conservative establishment – wealthy Thais, the military, and ardent supporters of the monarchy. The Bhumjaithai Party also leans conservative and is in the current ruling coalition, but it is more ideologically flexible than the others. Fragmentation within the establishment will be an important watchpoint for post-election government formation talks.
What about the opposition?
Pheu Thai has nominated three candidates (the maximum allowed per party) for prime minister; the two key ones are Paetongtarn and Srettha Thavisin, a real estate tycoon. Move Forward — the successor to Future Forward, which was dissolved in 2020 — is the other main opposition party. Its leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, is the party’s sole nominee for prime minister. While Pheu Thai and Move Forward share a desire to reduce the military’s influence in politics, they otherwise have little in common. Pheu Thai’s heartland is the populous, mostly rural and poor north and northeast regions, whereas Move Forward’s strongest support is among young, middle-class urban voters, many of whom are not fond of Thaksin or his daughter, a political novice. Moreover, Move Forward has dared to discuss the role of the country’s monarchy, a sensitive issue, though it has backed away somewhat from this recently. But its stance has helped it to win the support of student protesters who took to the streets in 2020-2021, calling for democratic reforms and checks on the monarchy’s power.
Who's leading the polls?
Pheu Thai is far ahead. It is highly likely that it picks up the most House seats, by a comfortable margin, but polling is not accurate enough to give us a reliable steer on the likely scale of its victory. Move Forward is second in most polls and appears to be gaining ground.
It looks like the Thaksin-backed party will surely win but won't be able to govern. Why is that?
The country’s 2017 constitution gave the junta the right to appoint 250 senators, who remain in office until 2024 and will vote together with the 500 members of the House to choose the next prime minister. This gives conservative parties an in-built advantage. So, the House elections will not directly determine who leads the next government, though the results will shape coalition negotiations.
The vote for prime minister will take place after the junta-appointed Election Commission has confirmed at least 95% of the House results — it has up to 60 days to do so. There is no time limit on the selection of the prime minister; in 2019, it took about two months from polling day until a new officeholder was confirmed.
What would need to happen for Paetongtarn to become PM? Would the army allow it? Why is Thaksin's daughter so popular?
To get the 376 votes required to secure the premiership, Pheu Thai would need to either assemble a coalition of that many seats in the House or somehow obtain the backing of at least a portion of the senators. On the latter option, it is thought possible that Pheu Thai could join forces with Prawit’s Palang Pracharat Party, even though the two have been fierce opponents. Prayut, on the other hand, is much less likely to consider working with Pheu Thai.
As a member of the Shinawatra clan, Paetongtarn is both wildly popular with Pheu Thai’s supporters and contentious for conservatives. Promises of expensive giveaways such as a 10,000 baht ($290) one-off payment for every Thai citizen 16 years old and above have also surely helped. Pheu Thai could put forward Srettha for the premiership instead, in the hope the well-known businessman is more palatable to senators.
A Pheu Thai-led government would likely face legal and constitutional pressure, and potentially another coup.
Is there any chance her dad will be allowed to return to Thailand?
This is conceivable if there is a Pheu Thai government, though it would likely trigger protests by pro-establishment supporters and possibly raise the odds of a coup.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor, Eurasia Group.
The Graphic Truth: Going to the polls in 2023
We've got some big national elections coming up in the first half of 2023. In February, voters in Nigeria, Africa's most populous and largest economy, will pick a new president. Three months later, Thais head to the polls in what will be a major test of the army's political power. And in June, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces his toughest reelection bid since coming to power in 2014. Here are votes scheduled to take place in the first six months of the year, excluding microstates.