The role of the monarchy at the heart of the fight for Thailand’s future

Get free Thailand updates

we will send you one myFT Daily Digest Latest Email Rounding Thailand News every morning.

The conservative establishment in Thailand has many reasons to ensure that Pita Limjaroenrat, the winner of May’s general election, does not become prime minister. His policies included military reform, the abolition of monopolies, and the decentralization of power from Bangkok: collectively, an existential threat to the generals and oligarchs running the country.

But since the unelected senators in the National Assembly last week did not vote for PITA, he used only one line of attack. Senators rejected his pledge to reform the lèse majeste law, Section 112 of the Thai criminal code, which punishes anyone who insults the Thai monarchy with three to fifteen years in prison.

A taboo subject for politics until street protesters came to the agenda in 2020, the sudden debate over lèse majeste highlights how the Thai monarchy – led by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who spends most of his time in Germany – now To what extent The center of a decades-long conflict between liberal democracy and traditional conservative rule.

“The role of the monarchy is now front and center,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “It’s never been so politicized before.”

Pita’s Move Forward party won a clear majority in the general election along with its ally, Phu Thai, the successor to the movement of populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

However, the National Assembly votes to select the prime minister, consisting of 250 senators selected by the military junta that took power in a 2014 coup. Almost all of them refused to support the election winner, leading to a deadlock in the assembly, and no one was able to make a resolution. New Govt.

During Thursday’s debate, Senator Kamnoon Siddhisamaran said, “You are toppling the monarchy, which is united with the security of the country.” Another senator, Somchai Sawangkarn, said, “Please give us a clear answer as to how you will show your loyalty to the monarchy.”

A clean-cut, Harvard-educated businessman who laces his speeches with technical jargon in English, Pita has criticized the establishment for using the monarchy as a tool to shut down his political opponents.

“There are many groups who want to stop me from becoming the prime minister. , , Because they are about to lose their interests, be it concessions or trade. So they deliberately bring in the institution of monarchy to protect their interests,” he said ahead of the assembly vote.

“I believe that if someone did not use the motto ‘We will fight for the king’ to overthrow the government, if someone did not stage a coup in the name of the monarchy . . . if we destroy each other If we had not used Section 112 to do this, the conflicts in Thai society would not have come to this point.”

Pita’s desire to reform lèse majeste resonated with his supporters, who went beyond the youth and the urban middle class, with Move Forward winning an unexpectedly large number of votes in rural areas.

At a park in front of the Assembly building, Somphop Chamsari, a 40-year-old office worker, came out with a handwritten placard to support Pita, telling senators: “If you abstain from voting, you must stop breathing.” should also stay away”.

Somphop said he wanted change in Thailand. “I want to see an amendment to the Lez Majesty law. As for me, I used to occasionally post respectful criticism about the monarchy on my Facebook. Once I got a call from the Metropolitan Police (Bureau) and I came to meet. They told me to stop and they threatened to press charges against me.

But even though Thailand has many functioning democratic institutions – television news is dominated by PITA and citizens like Somphop have the freedom to protest – analysts say the potential for change is slim.

The next step would be another assembly vote to nominate a prime minister, but the gulf that PITA would have to cross to win seemed “impossible”, said political analyst Ken Lohtepanont.

With senators likely to decline any further role in government, Phu Thai must decide whether to trade his popularity for power by cutting deals with parties affiliated with the military.

Meanwhile, political impasse means there is little prospect of reforms to lift Thailand’s sluggish rate of economic growth and move it beyond middle-income status.

The institution is likely to continue to launch a barrage of legal challenges to undermine and discredit Move Forward without any direct harassment. So far, these include a constitutional court case against the reform of lèse majeste and a demand to disqualify Pita from parliament over an alleged shareholding in a media company.

“Thailand will use legal instruments as a safeguard to prevent challenges to the established order,” said Napon Jatusripitak, research fellow at the Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “Democracy is allowed to flourish in Thailand only when it is in harmony with the status quo.”

Additional reporting by Rin Jirenuwat in Bangkok