After a murky election outcome, what’s next for Thailand — and Thaksin?

SINGAPORE — Two rival factions are still jostling for power, days after Thailand’s first election in nearly five years, but analysts said that the pro-junta Palang Pracharath party is almost certain to form the next government.   

This means that Pheu Thai — the party linked to former premier Thaksin Shinawatra — will likely occupy the opposition bench, the analysts added.

Even though full official results are not due until May 9, these two major parties have started efforts to form a coalition government — though not with each other.

On Monday (March 25), a day after the polls, Palang Pracharath said that it expects to snag 251 seats in the 500-seat lower house and will talk to “like-minded” parties with the same ideology.

As for Pheu Thai, it said that it has started negotiating with other anti-junta parties to try to form a government.

At last count, Pheu Thai had garnered 137 of the 350 elected constituency seats in the lower house, more than Palang Pracharath’s 97 seats.

In terms of the popular vote, however, Palang Pracharath is leading the count with 7.6 million votes, eclipsing Pheu Thai by half a million.

What is next for the two camps and for Mr Thaksin?

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A ‘SHOO-IN’ FOR PRO-JUNTA PARTY

In a system roundly criticised as being skewed towards keeping pro-junta politicians in power, only 350 of the 500-seat lower house are directly elected “constituency seats”.

The other 150 “party-list” seats are allotted under a complex formula that effectively limits the number of seats each party can hold.

Along with a 250-seat senate, or upper house, picked by the junta, the group commanding a simple majority (at least 376 of the 750 seats) will choose the next prime minister.

Associate Professor Antonio Rappa, who heads the security studies programme at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said that the system is tilted in Palang Pracharath’s favour, which means the pro-junta party is a “shoo-in” to form the government.

“There’s no way that Pheu Thai and the other parties (can do so). They can try to form some form of opposition coalition,” added Assoc Prof Rappa, whose research covers South-east Asian politics.  

Agreeing, Dr Termsak Chalermpalanupap of the Asean Studies Centre at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore-based research centre, said that the junta-linked party has an edge because it may count on the 250-member senate.

Moreover, Pheu Thai will not get any party-list seats, added Dr Termsak, who is also with the institute’s Thailand studies programme.

News reports have said that Pheu Thai, which has secured 137 seats, is unlikely to get any party-list seats, as it may have surpassed the limit on the number of seats it can garner.

By contrast, Palang Pracharath is likely to scoop 15 to 25 party-list seats, as it has just 97 seats and is leading the popular vote.

A RACE TO FORM COALITIONS

For Pheu Thai, Assoc Prof Rappa said that it could team up with others such as the Bhumjaithai Party (which has secured 39 seats) and the fledgling progressive party, Future Forward (30 seats), which is popular with young voters.

But there will be squabbles about “leadership issues and policy emphases”, he added.

Disagreeing, Dr Termsak said that Bhumjaithai, which has the third-highest number of seats after Pheu Thai and Palang Pracharath, is composed of “professional politicians”. It will therefore plump for the winning side and likely go with Palang Pracharath.

The junta-linked party could also join hands with parties such as the Democrat Party (33 seats) — its poor showing forced its leader Abhisit Vejjajiva to step down — as well as others with a smaller vote share to comfortably take a majority, he added.  

PHEU THAI: WHAT WENT WRONG?  

Some political observers had expected Pheu Thai to fare much better in the polls, given the rising unease with the junta’s authoritarian grip on power in some quarters of Thailand.

But Dr Termsak said that ultimately, Pheu Thai did not offer anything new and “just wanted to oppose the military government”.

Palang Pracharath, on the other hand, was selling the message of peace and order, and that its leader and incumbent prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha could deliver that, he added.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s statement hours before polls opened, which quoted his father and late King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s advice to back “good” leaders to prevent “chaos”, also helped Palang Pracharath, Dr Termsak said.

Dr Michael Montesano, coordinator of the Thailand studies programme at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, noted that the pro-junta party also appealed to a significant block of voters who believed that the authoritarian approach was the best path forward for Thailand.

“As well as having the power of the state behind it and the networks of the politicians that the party recruited, this other factor — the ideological appeal that Palang Pracharath had for many voters — was also significant,” he said. 

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WHAT’S AHEAD FOR PHEU THAI — AND THAKSIN?

With pro-junta forces likely to stay in power, Pheu Thai and Mr Thaksin will need to do several things.

The party will have to return to the drawing board, and Mr Thaksin, whose loyalists have won every election since 2001, will have to figure out how to win over first-time voters, Dr Termsak said.

There were more than seven million such voters in this election. Many of them were drawn to the Future Forward Party, which auto-parts billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit founded just a year ago.

“This is the new area for political contest — how to capture the young votes,” Dr Termsak said.

Young voters do not care about the long-running battle between pro-junta and pro-Thaksin forces, and do not want to choose sides, he added.

“They don’t want to be seen as so useless that way… They want to try something new and offer themselves as a new solution. Pheu Thai will have to look at how to overcome the old stigma that it belongs to the Shinawatra family.”

As for Mr Thaksin, Dr Montesano said the real question was: What does he want?

The billionaire has been in self-imposed exile since being toppled in a coup in 2006.

“Does he want to come back to Thailand? If getting a government in place that is going to allow him to come to Thailand is what he wants, then he’s lost out,” Dr Montesano added.

Ultimately, though, Dr Termsak said that the election has moved Thailand away from the junta government.

This was an improvement from the status quo, nearly five years after the junta took power in a coup that ousted the government of Mr Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck.

General Prayuth, who will likely remain as prime minister, will no longer have absolute government power and has to work within a normal parliamentary democracy, he added.

“These coup leaders already long overstayed (their) welcome. They promised peace and order. We have peace and order now,” said Dr Termsak, who is Thai.

“We want to move on.”