Everybody won in Thailand’s election, except the voters Opinion by NYT
The New York Times has published an opinion piece covering the outcomes of the recent elections in Thailand. Caliber.Az reprints this article.
For a brief time this summer, it seemed that Thailand might finally be on the cusp of truly representative government.
In elections in May, a pro-reform party won the largest share of votes, riding a wave of public discontent over nine years of military rule and the outsize prerogatives enjoyed by the Thai royal family. Thailand’s monarchy is one of the wealthiest and longest-reigning in the world.
Backed by the military and the judiciary, it is the linchpin of a conservative establishment that has fought off challenges to its dominance for decades, often with royally endorsed military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments. This state of affairs has mired Thailand in a cycle of recurring political violence and frustrated the democratic yearnings of a new generation.
Like many of my compatriots who also grew up in this authoritarian climate, I celebrated the win by the progressive Move Forward Party, which openly seeks to curb royal power, and the second-place finish of Pheu Thai, a longtime opposition party. Voters issued a resounding call for change.
Now those hopes are being crushed.
More than two months after the elections, Thailand still does not have its new government, as the conservative establishment manoeuvres to deny the will of the people once again by frustrating Move Forward’s efforts to form a coalition.
We’ve been here before. But this time it feels even more ominous for the future of Thai democracy. A royalist establishment that has relied on the blunt force of the military has added political sophistication to its arsenal. Working through the parliamentary system, this old guard has manoeuvred to block Move Forward and co-opt Pheu Thai in return for allowing the party’s 74-year-old spiritual leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, a popular former prime minister, to return from exile.
The Thai monarchy has always been an aggressive contender for political power.
In 1932, Thailand ended centuries of absolute royal rule in favour of a constitutional monarchy. But the ensuing 70-year reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016, undid much of that. After taking the throne in 1946, he forged ties with the military, and together they engineered a neoroyalist system that, although far from an absolute monarchy, placed the palace at the political apex and exalted Bhumibol as a godlike figure. Elected governments were subservient or tossed out. The neoroyalists were never interested in investing in electoral politics to guarantee their power, relying instead on shortcuts like military coups and strict lèse-majesté laws that forbid criticism of the monarchy and are an important tool for protecting its privileges.
But over the past decade, with the towering figure of Bhumibol gone and the palace occupied by his less-revered son, King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, the neoroyalists have realized the need for novel strategies. After its latest coup, in 2014, the military moved to preserve conservative dominance and contracept future challenges with new changes, including stuffing the Senate with appointees to offset the democratically elected House of Representatives.
These tactics are hardly new in the political life of Southeast Asia. Autocratic governments in the region have become more sophisticated in manipulating electoral systems to secure power. Myanmar’s military junta has for years retained 25 per cent of the seats in Parliament, which enables it to block constitutional changes that could weaken its authority. After decades of neutralising dissent, the Cambodian strongman Hun Sen has more recently turned to using stage-managed elections to give his regime a veneer of legitimacy. (He intends to hand power over to his son.)
The Thai neoroyalists are adopting the same strategies.
Parliamentary means have been used to deny Move Forward its right to form a government. The party’s leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, failed to secure enough votes in Parliament to become prime minister and is under investigation for failing to disclose shares held in a media company, which could disqualify him from office. Move Forward represented too much change to Thailand’s stifling political culture and simply could not be allowed to take power.
Other forces that bode ill for reform are also in motion. The conservative pushback has prompted the pro-democracy Pheu Thai party to break from a proposed coalition with Move Forward and into talks with conservatives on forming a government.
This is a momentous shift for Thai politics. Pheu Thai is the successor to a party founded by Mr. Thaksin, a populist business tycoon who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. He won over voters by advocating to improve livelihoods in poor and marginalized regions of the country. But when his popularity threatened to eclipse that of Bhumibol, Mr. Thaksin was ousted in a coup and fled the country, saying he could not get a fair trial in Thailand on a series of corruption charges; he was later sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison. The struggle for influence — marked by two coups and a series of violent street demonstrations — between the conservative establishment and Mr. Thaksin’s supporters and relatives has dominated Thai politics for more than two decades.
Now there are indications that Mr. Thaksin and Pheu Thai are falling in line with the royalists. Mr. Thaksin has long expressed a desire to come home and reunite with his family. In the run-up to the elections in May, he pleaded publicly for permission to return home and came out against reforms proposed by Move Forward to curb royal influence.
Last week, Mr. Thaksin’s daughter announced that he would return to Thailand on Aug. 10 after 15 years in exile. Royalists who previously cursed Mr. Thaksin as public enemy No. 1 are now cheering his return, hoping to thwart what they see as the greater threat: the Move Forward Party and the generational change that it represents.
Mr. Thaksin gets to come home; the royal establishment dodges a potent challenge. The only ones who won’t get what they want are Thai voters.