The election of Anutin Charnvirakul, the Bhumjaithai Party leader, as Thailand’s Prime Minister is a transformation away from the forces controlled by Thaksin Shinawatra to a government in favor with Thailand’s royalty – Anutin is said to be close to King Maha Vajiralongkorn – and the urban elites.
The prognosis is for Thailand’s comic-opera politics, which have seen three prime ministers dumped in five months, to nonetheless endure additional months of instability as contending forces jockey for position in the run-up to national polls demanded by its coalition partner sometime after the new year.
It may actually put an end for good, however, to the two decades during which Thaksin, his relatives, and associates played an outsize role in Thailand’s politics. The 75-year-old telecommunications tycoon flew out to Dubai on September 4, ostensibly to seek medical care, but with his coalition ousted and facing a September 9 hearing that could put him in prison, many think he won’t return. It also likely means the end of a years-long attempt, spearheaded by Thaksin with the backing of international gaming interests to open the kingdom to the introduction of opulent gaming resorts.
“Thaksin’s exit, which echoes his first exile, was so smooth it points to a ‘sign’ and an ‘enabler’ who had allowed him to leave,” said a Thai political science professor. “While there’s no telling if he will return for his upcoming court hearing on September 9, his choice again will be a defining moment for his future, his family, and his party’s political standing.”
Thaksin is also having to deal with revelations of his US$3.5 billion fortune and his connections to Benjamin Mauerberger, known in some circles as “Thailand’s Jho Low,” a reference to the disgraced financier at the center of one of Asia’s biggest financial scandals. Mauerberger, a 47-year-old South African with deep connections to Cambodia’s political elite, was a subject of an August 29 article in Asia Sentinel and two more by former Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Wright in his blog Whale Hunting – Uncovering the Secret Worlds of Money & Power.
Anutin, 58, parlayed 69 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives into a 273-vote majority by making common cause with the pro-democracy People’s Party, the lower house’s largest, giving in to the demand for national elections within four months.
Chaikasem Nitisiri, the candidate of Thaksin’s Pheu Thai bloc garnered only 132 votes in his attempt to carry the standard after Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin’s youngest daughter, was ousted by the Constitutional Court last week after being suspended on July 1 over a leaked phone call with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen that appeared to disparage Thai border officers at a time when the two countries were involved in a border skirmish.
The People’s Power Party, the reincarnation of two previous youth-led reform efforts, is likely to be the beneficiary if it can replicate its two previous electoral successes, although both were voided by the constitutional court, which has ended at least five governments since 2006, in addition to spiking the previous iterations of People’s Power. Move Forward won 151 seats, the biggest total in the 2023 election but was blocked from power by the courts and political forces.
People’s Power is expecting to capitalize on the still simmering populist anger left over from its 2023 blockage from power. Behind the reform movement is said to be Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the scion of the Thai Summit Group empire, one of Thailand’s richest families, who sparked the original version. Although he has been barred from politics along with his Future Forward Party, Move Forward and People Party are the same entity in a new skin.
Anutin is expected to lead a minority coalition on shaky ground, with the much bigger People’s Party looking over his shoulder and likely in no mood for compromise. The challenges awaiting the new leader include a sputtering economy that paved the way for Thaksin to come home in the first place, with the establishment desperate to find a way to restart a country sunk in corruption and ineptitude from nine years of rule by the army and a serious blow to the tourism-oriented economy by Covid.
“So much damage has been done to Thailand’s growth prospects and international standing that there is no time to waste in rectifying and revitalizing the country and its economy,” at the time said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Chulalongkorn University professor and one of the country’s most astute observers. “It is likely to be far better than the nine years Thailand endured under General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the coup maker who became prime minister.”
But that didn’t happen, nor did anybody do anything about corruption, which, according to an informed source in the financial industry, has actually gotten worse. Now the economy has been hit particularly by US President Donald Trump’s trade war and the Cambodian border dispute, which has dented tourism anew. The government had already forecast 2025 growth to slump to 2 per cent, well behind regional peers Indonesia and the Philippines.
Coalition Kingmaker
For nearly a decade, Anutin who heads Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction, has served as a coalition kingmaker, drawing on provincial networks and business allies. Unlike the now-metamorphosed Move Forward Party, Bhumjaithai has prioritized building strong local networks through infrastructure projects, a major point of contention when Thaksin, prior to the Cambodian border dust-up that cost his daughter her job, was seeking to oust Anutin from the interior minister position with its wealth of infrastructure gravy.
Thailand has a long history of military coups, with judges aligned with the elites and generals repeatedly ousting elected prime ministers. Political volatility is endemic because of the contest between powerful forces including the military, the royalty, and its allied urban oligarchy against the façade of elected government that changes with the weather, to little effect.
The outlook is for continuing uncertainty as the contending forces jockey for primacy, with Thailand slipping ever further behind the rest of ASEAN in importance as public confidence wanes amid a swirl of political intrigue, corruption charges, perceptions of mismanagement, the possibility of another in a long line of military coups, and delays in policy decisions. It remains to be seen if People’s Power’s gamble to go to bed with one of the entrenched interests pays off, or if the party will be sullied by its association — or if it pulls off an electoral victory only to be once again voided by the entrenched interests. And whether the youth finally take to the streets.
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