Will Thai politics return to stability or undergo more chaos ahead?
The highly disputed judicial interventions and opaque backroom negotiations of the last few weeks have sent a sobering signal to 14 million Move Forward voters and 11 million Pheu Thai voters: that their votes don’t matter when certain powers cannot be held accountable by the ballot.
As one supporter at Move Forward’s headquarters yelled, after the party’s dissolution: “Why the (censored) are we still voting then?!”
And the less politically interested citizen will still view these developments with concern, as they wait for a government to fix a sluggish economy, and fulfill the bread and butter election promises they voted for.
At the other end is the 75-year-old Thaksin, who, despite holding no official political office or party position, could call all coalition party leaders to his home to discuss the next leader of Thailand. That speaks volumes about his enduring influence.
He has already paid a high price for over two decades of political ambitions – and appears to be paying an even higher price for his return home.
Mr Thaksin is now waging a political fight on two fronts: First, the aforementioned coalition “frenemies” who are tolerating the current arrangement as long as power is being shared. But that truce could be over as soon as the next election campaign, with the ultra-pragmatic Bhumjaithai Party breathing down Pheu Thai’s neck.
Then there’s the opposition People’s Party. The dissolution of its predecessor has not dampened its momentum and it could be on track to win the next election as well. Its supporters are young and believe in its core progressive-reformist ideology, rather than a cult of personality. They’re also too young to have experienced Mr Thaksin in office, and they see his Pheu Thai Party as part of the political establishment complicit in denying Move Forward and Pita Limjaroenrat from forming a government.
No one has significantly influenced Thailand and its politics as much as Mr Thaksin. He inspired political galvanisation of the rural electorate thanks to his tailored populist policies, as much as he invoked ire for what critics described as ruling with an emperor-like arrogance.
The fact that he’s still at the centre of heated debates is proof of his staying power. But putting his daughter on the PM hot seat might be one of the biggest political gambits of Mr Thaksin’s life.
If unsuccessful, it could not only upend his daughter’s rule, but also his own political legacy – and inflict lasting damage on Thailand’s battered democracy.
