What the election rout means for Thai military elite
The landslide victory of two progressive political parties in Thailand's election on Sunday may signal the end of years of control by factions backed by the military establishment, going back to the country's coup in 2014. And it also highlights the number of people openly questioning the role of the monarchy there, particularly among younger generations, a subject that was once considered taboo. The biggest victor, the Move Forward Party and its ally, the Kuatai Party, have now agreed to form a coalition, but their wins don't necessarily mean that they can take power or that Move Forward's leader, Pitta Limja Rurnrat, can become prime minister because the military and its allies still have options. Quite a hefty price to pay for someone who's thinking of abolishing the election results or forming a minority government. Sid Dinan Pong Sudarak is a political science professor at the Jualalangorn University in Bangkok. He tells Reuters what brought Move Forward this far and what the days ahead could hold. Move Forward has welfare policies, but Move Forward is moved to a new frontier.
It's no longer about populism. So actually they have tapped into a lot of sentiments that have been feeling, I think, that Thailand needs to change. And that change has to do with the reform of the military, the monarchy, getting rid of the draft. So I think the military coup for them would be the last resort. We might see some manipulation, some subversion. Short of a military coup, we've seen party dissolutions in the past, disqualifications of politicians and, you know, KUNPITA, a leader of Move Forward is under charge, could be disqualified. So we might see something like that.
But if there's a subversion of the resort from yesterday, which is a very strong mandate, we could very well see some social unrest as a result. Scenes like this three years ago helped give rise to these election results. Student-led protests against the power of the monarchy and the military. Prime Minister Pryut Chanochia first came to power in the 2014 coup. Most immediate hurdle to PITA replacing the prime minister, seen here, is PITA needs to command a majority in parliament. The issue with that is that members of one of the chambers of parliament, the Senate, were appointed by the military after the coup and have traditionally sided with parties led by generals. The progressive parties are calling for the Senate to respect the will of the people.
Military says it only intervenes in civilian politics when it has to act to save the nation from chaos. It has ruled out any involvement in the election.
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