Thai Politics Once Again in Turmoil

As parties jockey amid Thaksin’s fading power, the elites look on

The end of the Shinawatras? Photo from CNN

Thailand’s political merry-go-round is expected to start to spin again later this week when the 500-member parliament convenes, with contending political parties jockeying to form a coalition to replace Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, ousted by the Constitutional Court last week after two months of suspension by the court.

The jockeying, between the country’s three biggest parties – the currently ruling Pheu Thai, with 135 seats, Bhumjaithai with 69, which bailed out of the ruling coalition in July, and the opposition People’s Power Party with 143 – is being closely watched by some of the world’s biggest gaming combines, with the fate of a multibillion dollar measure to allow them to build opulent gaming resorts on the line.

International gaming companies have been circling for the chance to establish the complexes, likely in consortia with domestic corporations, with the potential, according to Citigroup, of pretax margins of 40 percent to 50 percent. Two are said to have already entered into talks about future entertainment complex projects. With the ruling coalition’s power waning, the bill’s chances are fading along with it.

“I think we are going in for worse politics for the country than ever,” said a business community figure who asked to remain anonymous. “This could open up opportunities for a new political party with brand new people or candidates. This for sure also marks the end of the Shinawatras,” the political clan that has played a crucial role in Thai politics for more than two decades.

Fighting for clout

None of the three parties has the clout to form a ruling coalition without the support of one of the other two although People’s Power, with its cache of seats, is regarded as the kingmaker, with Bhumjaithai reportedly brandishing cabinet positions to them. Marathon meetings have continued but all have failed to find a combination for a governing coalition, with People’s Party leader Nattapong Ruangpanyawut demanding new elections within four months.

Philosophically and politically, the three are at loggerheads, with Pheu Thai the populist creation of telecoms billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, who sees his hopes for a political dynasty fading; the royalist Bhumjaithai headed by the politically ambitious Anutin Charnvirakul; and the admired youth-oriented, reformist People’s Power, the reconstituted chrysalis of the Move Forward Party, which itself was reconstituted from the wreckage of Future Forward, both of which were dissolved by the courts.

Political uncertainty

It seems certain that an extended period of political uncertainty is in the cards. It took months for Pheu Thai to form a government after the 2023 elections, outmaneuvering Move Forward with the backing of the military-dominated senate, the constitutional court, which blocked Move Forward’s leadership, and the elites working to block the majority party from forming a coalition despite the fact it held 151 seats to Pheu Thai’s 141. In the end, a scrambling Thaksin put together an unwieldy 11-party coalition including the military-backed Palang Pracharat and United Thai Nation, both of which had been drubbed in the election and were near extinction.

Pheu Thai installed real estate magnate Srettha Thavasin as speaker, only to have the Constitutional Court void his speakership. Thaksin countered by installing his 38-year-old daughter Paetongtarn, who lasted until the Constitutional Court ousted her in July for “putting her personal interests over those of the nation” with a phone call with Cambodian godfather Hun Sen seeking a resolution to a July border dispute between the two nations. She was the fifth prime minister ousted by the courts since 2008. The party limped on with a caretaker until the court’s final decision.

The fact is that powerful forces, including the royalty headed by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, business interests, and the military, are likely to determine the composition of the leadership, as they did in 2023.

“For decades, elected governments have risen through popular mandates only to be constrained or overthrown by coups, judicial rulings, or bureaucratic maneuvers,” Pavin Chachavalpongpun wrote on September 1 in the Global Asia Forum, a publication of the Global Asia Foundation, a Seoul-based think tank. “Although Thailand is formally a parliamentary democracy, real political authority is mediated by entrenched elites within the monarchy, military, judiciary and bureaucracy, whose interventions prevent power being rooted in mass constituencies.”

As much as anything, the ouster of Paetongtarn by the court is a symbol of the waning influence of her 75-year-old father Thaksin, who returned triumphantly last November after 15 years in exile during which he engineered popularly elected surrogate governments only to have the courts or the military end them, culminating in a 2014 military coup that stultified both the politics and economics.

Mismanaging return

It's likely that if he had managed his return successfully, remaining submerged politically while playing doting grandfather as he pulled the strings from behind the scenes, he might have had better luck. But he increasingly fell afoul of the powers that be with his overt manipulation of the political process at the same time his economic reforms were stalled.

Weakened, Thaksin has been accused on the floor of parliament of having faked the infirmities that kept him out of prison with a six-month stay in a VIP room on the 14th floor of Bangkok’s Police General Hospital – sarcastically dubbed “the Thaksin suite” – after he returned from exile in August of 2023. He had been due to be sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges, reduced by King Maha Vajiralongkorn to a single year before he was pardoned. The resurrection of the charge, and another of having insulted the king under harsh lese majeste laws in 2015 in South Korea has also been resurrected, is another sign of his diminishing status.

“What distinguishes the present moment is the growing sense that the Shinawatra cycle may finally be reaching its end,” wrote Pavin, a former diplomat-turned-exiled-opposition figure. Previous ousters of his surrogates triggered mass Red Shirt mobilizations. “Paetongtarn’s ouster has so far failed to inspire comparable resistance. The family’s brand, once synonymous with transformative populism, now carries the weight of repeated defeat.”

The monarchy and its networks, particularly the military, which lost considerable electoral ground in 2023 amid widespread public disapproval over corruption and economic mismanagement, are now back. The royalist Bhumjaithai, whose behind-the-scenes leader is power broker Newin Chidchob, is likely the favored party of the elites despite its unsavory reputation for connections with smuggling interests and despite its lack of a numerical majority.

Thaksin, despite his diminished status, remains a formidable strategist. Pheu Thai faces an uphill battle following Bhumjaithai’s withdrawal in June. The military parties Palang Pracharath, United Thai Nation, and Chart Thai Pattana, which repeatedly drove his parties from power, are in the game.

“Watch Prayuth,” a strategist told Asia Sentinel, a reference to Prayuth Chan-ocha, the former coup leader who came to power in 2014, leading the country as head of a military council before becoming a civilian prime minister in 2019 to remain in power through July 2023.

“Prayuth came back,” the source said. “He is very quiet and rock solid, not giving any signal at all. There is a possibility there. Nonetheless, this politics keeps us a million miles further away from Vietnam and Malaysia and Indonesia or maybe even the Philippines as well.”