CNA Explains: What’s next for Thailand after a month of political chaos?

BANGKOK: On Aug 7, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the opposition Move Forward Party, kicking off a period of political upheaval that saw prime minister Srettha Thavisin disqualified a week later and Paetongtarn Shinawatra appointed as the country’s new leader within 72 hours.
Rounding things up was former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra getting a royal pardon shortening his parole, on the same weekend his youngest daughter Paetongtarn took the helm. 
Judges called the party a “threat to the constitutional monarchy,” going a step further after the same court in January found the party’s election campaign promise of amending a draconian royal insult law as tantamount to high treason. 
All it took was a year for the party to go from winning the most seats in an election, then being blocked by its rivals from forming a government and banished to the opposition bench, to now being dissolved.
Its leader and once-prime minister hopeful Pita Limjaroenrat, along with 10 other party executives, have been banned from seeking political office for 10 years.
It was a sobering outcome for supporters and members yet very much expected, not only because of the January verdict but because its predecessor the Future Forward Party was also dissolved in 2020.
That in part inspired months of youth-led anti-government protests that called for wholesale changes to the political order, including the monarchy. And it is why, as of June, 272 individuals have been charged with lèse majesté, the very same law that these activists wanted abolished. 
When found guilty of insulting or threatening the monarchs, those accused could face up to 15 years’ jail per offence. At least 42 are currently incarcerated, according to legal aid group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.
It’s not the end of the road. Just days later, Move Forward’s surviving 143 MPs and members regrouped under the People’s Party, carrying over its trademark orange colour and brandishing a similar triangle logo to its predecessors’.
Their new leader is 37-year-old, two-time MP Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, who has been with the movement since its first iteration. Speaking to CNA at the party launch, Mr. Natthaphong made it clear to expect more of the same: “We believe and we strongly insist that we are going to continue our ideology and principle of our party.”
Supporters haven’t been deterred either: Since its launch on August 9, the People’s Party has signed up over 62,000 new members and raised nearly 26 million baht (US$758,000).
But existential threats persist. A separate ethics probe against 44 former Move Forward members for their aforementioned lèse majesté reform pledge could see not only a bigger chunk of currently active People’s Party MPs losing their seats, but also be banned from politics for life.
The Constitutional Court found Mr Srettha guilty of ethical misconduct in the nomination of Phichit Chuenban as cabinet minister, despite a conviction for attempted bribery of court officials in 2008.
The judges didn’t buy one of Mr Srettha’s main defending arguments – that as a former property tycoon, he lacked the public administration experience and therefore didn’t know that Mr Phichit was ineligible. There’s a legal principle that one cannot escape liability for violating a law they didn’t know about, and this case was no different.
The sudden end to Mr Srettha’s reign, just shy of a full year, came as a surprise not only to observers (including this correspondent) but also to the prime minister himself and his ruling Pheu Thai Party. 
His own itinerary had skipped attending the very court session, and was filled with trips for the next few weeks.
Mr Srettha’s dismissal sparked 24 hours of furious scrambling within the ruling Pheu Thai Party.
On the same evening of the court verdict, vehicles carrying the leaders of all major parties in the ruling coalition were seen entering the mansion of Thaksin Shinawatra, the toppled ex-prime minister who’s also the patriarch of the party he originally founded in 1998. 
Several sources told CNA this meeting was to determine a successor for Mr Srettha. Former attorney-general Chaikasem Nitisiri, one of Pheu Thai’s three original PM candidates from last year’s election, was put forward. And despite reported health concerns, the 75-year-old quickly emerged as the frontrunner .
However, the game flipped again the next morning, with Pheu Thai MPs in parliament speaking in favour of the only other PM candidate: Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the party’s leader and Mr Thaksin’s youngest daughter. She was not present at Thaksin’s evening meeting, as she herself was racing back from abroad. 
Eventually, Mr Thaksin and coalition partners agreed and thanks to a comfortable majority in parliament, lawmakers quickly confirmed Ms Paetongtarn as Thailand’s 31st prime minister, completing the change at the helm within 72 hours.
Visibly moved by the occasion, Ms Paetongtarn told CNA after the vote that she was initially saddened to see Mr Srettha go, but after “I talked to my family, and I talked to a lot of people from my party, and I decided that it’s about time to do something for the country”.
She is a political rookie at 38 years old and only joined the party in 2022, before becoming its leader last year. However, the youngest of three siblings is also said to be the most interested in politics, having accompanied her father in her younger years. The fact that she went on the campaign trail highly pregnant, until she had to bow out to give birth to her second child before the polls, also points to a certain determination.
Family dynasties are not a new phenomenon in Thai politics, but no other family has been as often at the top as the Shinawatras: From the patriarch Thaksin himself at the turn of the century until a military coup toppled and chased him out of the country in 2006; his brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat’s brief stint in 2018; his sister Yingluck until the most recent military coup in 2014; and his youngest daughter Paetongtarn now.
Mr Thaksin returned a year ago, on the same day Mr Srettha was confirmed as prime minister and after a prison sentence for past charges which he served in a hospital room. He was then released on parole in February. 
All of this is no coincidence.
Mr Thaksin has entered a Faustian pact that allowed his return home from 15 years of self-exile, while his Pheu Thai Party heads a coalition comprising parties led by his enemies and rivals, including the military generals that toppled Ms Yingluck in 2014. 
But it’s a deceptive and fragile truce: Mr Srettha’s dismissal is being interpreted as a warning shot by the old guard (consisting of the political and military establishment) against Mr Thaksin. 
While recently included in a royal pardon on the same weekend his daughter was confirmed as prime minister, Mr Thaksin is now dealing with a lese majeste charge stemming from a 2015 South Korean newspaper interview. The case is scheduled to resume in July 2025.
When Ms Paetongtarn was asked about her father’s possible influence, she admitted she will ask him for “advice”, but also insisted that she’s her “own person and I have my own goals that I want to achieve in the future”. 
The question is what happens when her own ambitions clash with her father’s.
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.