Global Courant 2023-05-14 18:07:57
A voter casts his vote in a ballot box at a polling place on May 14, 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Sirachai Arunrugstichai | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Thais were predicted to vote in record numbers on Sunday in an election expected to bring big gains to opposition forces, testing the resolve of a pro-military establishment at the heart of two decades of intermittent unrest.
Some 52 million eligible voters choose from progressive opposition parties – one with a knack for winning elections – and others allied to royalist generals keen to maintain the status quo after nine years of government led or supported by the military .
The election commission expects a turnout of more than 80%, with polls closing at 5pm (10am GMT) and unofficial results expected around 10pm (3pm GMT), said chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong.
Opinion polls indicate that the opposition parties Pheu Thai and Move Forward will gain the most seats, but with no guarantee that either will rule due to parliamentary rules set in favor by the military after the 2014 coup.
“I hope the party I voted for can make things happen as they promised when they campaigned,” said business owner Nicharee Tangnoi, 29, who declined to say which party she supported. The current government “has done its best and I hope the next government can deliver what they promise.”
Elsewhere in the capital, prime ministerial candidates for the ruling party and opposition groups cast their votes, including Pheu Thai’s incumbent Prayuth Chan-ocha and Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
“People need change,” Paetongtarn said after casting her vote, expressing “high hopes” for a landslide victory.
The election once again pits Pheu Thai’s driving force, the billionaire Shinawatra family, against a hotchpotch of old money, military and conservatives with influence over key institutions that have toppled three of the populist movement’s four governments.
The seeds of the conflict were sown in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra, a brash capitalist upstart, was swept into power on a pro-poor, pro-business platform that boosted disenfranchised rural masses and challenged patronage networks, putting him at odds. with Thailand’s established elite.
Thaksin’s opponents in the urban middle class saw him as a corrupt demagogue who abused his position to build his own power base and further enrich his family.
Mass protests erupted in Bangkok during his second term. In 2006, the army overthrew Thaksin, who fled into exile.
His sister Yingluck’s government met the same fate eight years later. Now his daughter Paetongtarn, 36, a political neophyte, has taken over.
Dictatorship to Democracy
“May 14 will be a historic day. We will change from a dictatorship to a democratically elected government,” Paetongtarn told the crowd at Pheu Thai’s latest gathering on Friday.
The populist approach of Pheu Thai and its predecessors has been so successful that rival forces that once mocked it as vote-buying – the military-backed Palang Pracharat and Prayuth’s United Thai Nation – now offer strikingly similar policies.
Prayuth has been campaigning for continuity, hoping to woo middle-class conservative voters weary of street protests and political unrest.
Some analysts argue that the power struggle in Thailand is more than a grudge between the polarizing Shinawatra clan and its influential rivals, with signs of a generational shift and a yearning for a more progressive government.
Move Forward, led by 42-year-old Harvard alumnus Pita Limjaroenrat, has seen a late rise. It is counting on young people, including 3.3 million newly eligible voters, to support its plans to dismantle monopolies, weaken the military’s political role and amend a strict law against insulting the monarchy, which critics say is being used to suppress dissent.
“Hopefully the whole country will respect the results and the will of the people,” Pita said after the vote. Ben Kiatkwankul, partner at government affairs consultant Maverick Consulting Group, said: “The election is a test of conservative roots and the future of progressiveness.
“The problem is bigger than whether or not people like Thaksin or Prayuth. Now the old system is facing the liberalist wave.”
