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Jintamas Saksornchai and Grant Peck
Published July 3, 2023 • read for 3 minutes
Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn stands with lawmakers during the opening of parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, July 3, 2023. May’s general In the election, the country’s progressive Move Forward Party unexpectedly came out on top. Photo by Sunti Tapia /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s new parliament will convene Monday, nearly two months after a progressive opposition party won a stunning election victory, but there was still no clear sign that the leader will be able to become prime minister and end nine years of military-dominated rule.
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To form a government, a party must receive the support of a combined majority of the elected House of Representatives and the military-appointed Senate, representing the country’s traditionally conservative ruling class.
The Move Forward Party’s unexpected election victory alarmed the ruling establishment, which sees it as a threat to the status quo and the monarchy. Some senators have already announced their opposition to party leader Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated businessman.
Pita has formed an eight-party coalition with 312 seats in the 500-seat lower house, missing an overall majority without the support of a significant number of the 250 senators.
The election results showed that Move Forward’s progressive agenda resonated with a public weary of nine years of military-controlled rule under Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power as army commander in a 2014 coup and returned as prime minister following a general election in 2019. .
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But what made Move Forward popular with many voters was what alarmed royalist conservatives. The party pledged to reform many powerful institutions, including the monarchy and the military, which retain power and influence under a constitution drafted during Prayuth’s reign.
While threats from Move Forward’s ideological enemies are clear, tensions between the company and its largest partner in its coalition, the Pheu Thai Party, were less than expected.
Pheu Thai and its predecessors have won all national elections since 2001 until last May. It is the latest in a series of parties linked to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a 2006 military coup.
Royalist rulers have long harbored enmity towards Thaksin – a billionaire populist now in exile. The 2014 Prayuth coup ousted a government formed by Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.
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Move Forward and Pheu Thai have been bickering over who will get the position of House speaker, who was to be elected by parliament on Tuesday.
“The position of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is essential because he will determine the agenda of Parliament, and thus the degree of political transformation,” said Tyrell Haberkorn, a Thai scholar at the University of Wisconsin.
The two sides announced a compromise on Monday after a meeting. The coalition will nominate Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, a veteran leader of the Prachachat party, as speaker in the House, and Move Forward and Pheu Thai will each have one deputy speaker. Pita said the decision was made to strengthen unity among coalition allies to support his bid to become prime minister.
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Attachak Sattayanurak, a history professor at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand, suggested the apparent distrust between the two sides may be the biggest threat to Pita’s potential premiership.
Pheu Thai leaders, almost as a matter of pride, could not be seen as giving too much to their Move Forward partner, he said.
“People’s feelings in the Pheu Thai party, that it was a heavyweight, that it had won many elections and could be an agenda setter,” led many of them to insist that Move Forward should take over the post of the speaker would make Pheu Thai part of the pie, he said.
However, if Pheu Thai fails to demonstrate an unbreakable bond with Move Forward, it will “reduce the power of the group that calls itself a democracy bloc” and give the senators and their conservative allies “more reasons not to choose Pita” , said Attachak.
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Aside from Move Forward’s troubles with the Senate and Pheu Thai, there are serious fears that Pita and his party will be blocked by legal challenges, a fate that has brought down previous parties that have clashed with the conservative establishment.
Several Thaksin-backed governments and a party that was Move Forward’s predecessor fell victim to rulings by the Election Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission, both nominally independent bodies often seen as supporters of the ruling elite, along with the Constitutional Court .
Pita is accused of violating a constitutional ban on politicians holding shares in a media company. The media company is no longer active and Pita says the shares are part of his father’s estate and not his. The prospect that he could be banned from politics and even jailed for what is considered a minor technical offense at most has raised fears that the political instability that has plagued Thailand on and off since 2006 could be met with a vengeance. can return.
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