Before Thailand’s general election last Sunday, analysts were already forecasting a familiar scenario.
For every time Thais have gone to the polls this century, an anti-establishment party, either those associated with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, or in 2023 the Move Forward Party, have won the most seats in Parliament. And every time the “change” that they were supposed to represent has been frustrated sooner or later, either by military-led coups, or various legal manoeuvres.
Move Forward came first in 2023, but it was blocked from forming a government and later dissolved after the courts ruled that its promise to reform the country’s lese-majeste laws was unconstitutional.
The latest Thaksin-linked prime minister, his daughter Paetongtarn, was removed from office by the country’s constitutional court last year over an ethics violation, after a telephone call was leaked in which she appeared to treat former Cambodian leader Hun Sen as her superior while the two countries were on the brink of a border war. Another, Samak Sundaravej, was disqualified from office for hosting a cooking show on TV.
So when the People’s Party, the successor to Move Forward, was predicted to top the polls right up to the election, the question being asked was: how could Thailand escape from this cycle, in which reformist electoral success came up against the unmovable obstacle of what is widely termed the “royalist-military establishment”?
But Sunday’s polls brought a surprise. Thais did vote for a change – but so that things could stay the same.
Let me explain.
For the first time since the promulgation of the 1997 constitution, a conservative party, Bhumjaithai, won the biggest number of seats – 193 out of the lower house’s 500. That was the change. And there will be continuity, since incumbent Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is the party’s leader. If he joins forces with just one party viewed as a natural ally, Kla Tham, its 58 seats would give him a bare majority. Add on a couple of smaller conservative-leaning parties and he could be not far off 300. If he wants to take a “big tent” approach and invite Thaksin-linked Pheu Thai, that would bring yet another 74 seats.
So although discussions are going on right now, the unanimous verdict is that Mr Anutin has a clear path to power. He became the country’s leader last September after an agreement with the People’s Party, on the condition that he held elections soon, after two governments had fallen in two years. Now he has his own mandate.
It should be said that the result will disappoint those both inside and outside Thailand who want to see radical reform. But I think it is very good news for a country that is in dire need of stability.
Mr Anutin and his party have been standard-bearers of support for the army and staunch upholders of loyalty to King Vajiralongkorn, so there is a strong chance that he could be the first civilian leader to complete a four-year term of office for 20 years. The generals should feel no need to intervene with an ally as prime minister.
This should provide a huge boost to investor confidence in a country that has suffered from years of lagging growth and is over-reliant on a tourism industry that has recently suffered a small decline and is increasingly being challenged by other countries in the region, such as Vietnam.
There is hope, too, for those who wish for sensible reforms.
At a rally just before the election, Mr Anutin may have taken aim at idealistic People’s Party supporters when he said, “this is not a country that could be run by college interns”. More significant was the prominence he gave on stage to the “three technocrats” who run (and are expected to continue to run) the foreign, finance and commerce ministries. Promising competent, can-do and clean governance, Mr Anutin has vowed to dismantle international criminal cartels and crack down hard on corruption. That is a form of reform in itself.
In terms of the bigger political picture, voters were also asked last Sunday if they wanted a new constitution, and 60 per cent said yes. Parliament now has a mandate to begin drafting a new one.
Bhumjaithai has ruled out changing any provisions relating to the monarchy, but there are other areas, such as the very complicated rules that currently govern who can vote for and who can stand for the influential 200-member senate, that could be up for discussion.
This process could take a matter of years, but it should be remembered that pragmatic conservatives, should they be so inclined, can have greater latitude to enact reforms than self-proclaimed “reformists” – because the former have the trust of the institutions, while the latter’s very existence can seem to be a threat to upholders of the status quo.
This is what happened in neighbouring Malaysia, when Najib Razak was prime minister from 2009-18. The three “R”s – royalty, religion and race – remained untouchable. But significant economic and legal changes were made, as even opposition supporters conceded, if not publicly at the time.
As an optimistic observer, I believe the result of this election provides a chance for a far more stable period in Thai politics. It could be a much more mature one, as long as the system holds and everyone agrees to operate inside it. “Bhumjaithai’s victory today is the victory of all Thais,” Mr Anutin said on Sunday. If everyone, opponents as well as supporters, takes him at his word – or at least gives him the benefit of the doubt – maybe it could be.
Ending the spiral of instability would be one victory all on its own.
