Careful what you wish for. The Thai royalist-military establishment has spent years attempting to suppress the political forces that swelled around the billionaire businessman Thaksin Shinawatra. Instead of addressing the social roots of his populist appeal to rural Thais and the urban poor, it has used two coups, court cases and ruthless suppression of dissent to see off the tycoon and his proxies. The military has remained in power since removing his sister as prime minister in 2014. Yet in Sunday’s election, Pheu Thai, the latest party associated with him, was eclipsed only by a new progressive party demanding military- and monarchy-related reform.
The results are not even a landslide, says one political analyst, but a skyfall. The poll ruptured the division of Thailand into establishment “yellow shirt” and Thaksin “red shirt” supporters. The new Move Forward party took 14m votes and 151 seats by winning over young urbanites who would recoil from the former prime minister, a polarising figure convicted of corruption in absentia and with a dismal human rights record in office. It also picked up some support from Pheu Thai, now fronted by his daughter, which still took 9m votes and 141 seats. Together, the opposition have trounced the political establishment and agreed to form a coalition government.
