Ajit Karn
Bangkok: Monday marked the dissolution of the Thai parliament by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, paving the way for general elections in May as the erstwhile coup leader seeks to extend army-backed rule.
The election positions unpopular former army chief Prayut, who seized power in a 2014 coup, against the daughter of billionaire ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose shadow lingers over the kingdom’s political scene despite being in exile for more than a decade.
The main opposition Pheu Thai party, led by Paetongtarn Shinawatra, is polling well, but the 2017 constitution drafted by the junta will make it difficult for the party to win the presidency.
The dissolution was announced in a statement published in the official Royal Gazette on Monday. The Election Commission will affirm the date of the election later, with May 7 or 14 being the most probable.
The election is the second since the 2014 rebellion and the first since enormous pro-democracy demonstrations led by youth in Bangkok in 2020.
Unofficial campaigning has been ongoing for weeks, with the rising cost of living and the kingdom’s lethargic recovery from the pandemic taking centre stage.
The 68-year-old Prayut, who solidified his rule in a controversial election in 2019, has shown a degree of political endurance that is uncommon in Thailand.
In a poll published on Sunday, however, Prayut trailed far behind the leader, Paetongtarn, with just over 15 percent of the vote, placing her in third place.
In the same survey of 2,000 persons conducted by the National Institute of Development Administration, nearly 50 percent of respondents said they would vote for Pheu Thai, compared to 12 percent for Prayut’s United Thai Nation party.
Odds benefit army
Pheu Thai has stated that they are aiming for a large victory to prevent the military establishment from obstructing their path to power, thereby averting a repeat of 2019 when they won the majority of seats but were excluded from government.
Parliament is anticipated to appoint a prime minister sometime in July, once the Election Commission has finalised the results.
Under the 2017 constitution drafted by the military, the prime minister is selected by the 500 elected lower-house MPs and 250 appointed senators.
Paetongtarn told reporters at a rally on Friday, “I have high hopes that we will definitely form the government.”
“Therefore, we campaign on the landslide, as the landslide will give us the strength to form the government.”
If successful, she would be the third Shinawatra to become prime minister, following her father and his sister Yingluck, both of whom were deposed by Prayut’s 2014 coup.
Opinion polls indicate that Pheu Thai has a fighting chance, as many electors are weary of Prayut and the lack of progress in their own lives.
Prayut trails the reform-minded Move Forward Party in the polls, which seeks to capitalise on the anti-establishment sentiment of the 2020 street protests.
Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of the Move Forward party, told AFP that he believed electors were ready for a change because, over the past four years, “the sentiment of the era has changed significantly for every institution in this country.”
“I am confident that they will vote for the future rather than the good old days.”
Coup-prone
Since the establishment of democracy in 1932, Thailand has experienced more than a dozen coups, and the military-royalist establishment remains a significant force.
This elite’s willingness to tolerate another prime minister with ties to Thaksin, who remains a bogeyman for them, remains to be seen.
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Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkorn University, told AFP that the upcoming election would be “the most consequential in my lifetime.”
It will determine whether the kingdom “breaks out of an entrenched, two-decade-long rut,” he said.
It is conceivable that two or more military-linked parties, such as Prayut’s United Thai Nation and the ruling Palang Pracharath Party, will establish a coalition if Pheu Thai fails to win a landslide.
In 2006 and 2008, the Constitutional Court of Thailand dissolved two of Pheu Thai’s predecessor parties.
