Cheers from the crowd were overwhelming at a huge Pheu Thai Party rally in Chiang Mai in the final days of Thailand’s general election campaign, just as polls widely indicated the party’s top candidate in the ‘opposition to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is poised to potentially oust the former acting army chief.
It would be a triumphant return for the country’s most famous political family, after Paetongtarn’s exiled father Thaksin was ousted from power in a 2006 coup.
His various political parties have won the majority of seats in every Thai election since 2001, but those victories were overturned by the monarchy-aligned military establishment or the parties were dissolved.
But with polling day approaching on Sunday, these elections are shaping up to be a once-in-a-generation battle to topple Thailand’s pro-military government and bring democratic reforms to a country that has endured nearly a decade of military rule, after of another coup. in 2014.
Pheu Thai Party supporters wave banners and listen to candidate speeches in Chiang Mai, ahead of the May 14 general election. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)
A second, more progressive pro-democracy party, Move Forward, is also surging in the polls, galvanizing young Thai voters with calls for an overhaul of the country’s political structure and military rule, even going so far as to propose a rethinking of the swept away power of Thailand’s monarchy, a previously taboo subject.
The Pheu Thai party has been more evasive in its stance on restricting the monarchy, preferring to focus on the push for democracy, but it still draws large crowds at demonstrations and is a very popular with rural and working-class voters.
“Together we will recover democracy,” Shinawatra has said at campaign rally after rally.
“Vote Pheu Thai in a landslide,” she urged the crowd at another rally, before the 36-year-old gave birth to a child on May 1 and briefly interrupted her campaign duties.
Pheu Thai prime ministerial candidate Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 36, daughter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, gestures as she attends a major rally event ahead of upcoming elections in Bangkok on Friday. (Jorge Silva/REUTERS)
Why a landslide matters
At Wednesday’s election-day rally in Chiang Mai, the historic center of the Pheu Thai Party where its rural base is located, enthusiasm for the Shinawatra political dynasty was unwavering.
“I love Thaksin,” Nikom Mahawong, 55, said with a big smile, showing the red T-shirt he was wearing, with Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s face on it.
“I think she will be a good leader. She will lead Thailand to a better place,” he said.
Other supporters were also interested in seeing Shinawatra take power.
“I have always had faith in the Pheu Thai match,” said 43-year-old Wichapat Siraksa. “I want them to push Thailand forward,” he added. “I want Pheu Thai to win by thrashing.”
Nikom Mahawong, a big fan of Thaksin Shinawatra, attends a Pheu Thai Party rally in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, in the week ahead of what observers are calling Thailand’s most important election in a generation. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)
The country’s complex electoral rules, implemented after the coup, mean pro-democracy parties would need a landslide victory to overcome a system that is biased in favor of pro-military candidates.
The junta appointed 250 senators who, together with the lower house of Parliament, vote on who becomes prime minister. They are expected to overwhelmingly support pro-military candidates, as they did in the last election in 2019, which watchdog groups described as “heavily tilted” to benefit the military junta.
LOOK | What’s at stake in the Thai election: 
Why Thailand’s pro-democracy push may not be enough to shift power
A pro-democracy movement is surging in Thailand as voters head to the polls, but democracy advocates fear it may not be enough to shift the power of the conservative military establishment that has dominated the country for nearly a century decade
It calls for structural reform
It’s a system that infuriates young voters coming to a Move Forward event in Bangkok on May 9 to promote marriage equality and gay rights.
While some spoke of concerns about electoral manipulation, others were more optimistic about the prospect of democratic reforms in Thailand.
“The Move Forward party, it’s a new party and it gives us hope back,” said Supanid Phumithanes, 18, who will vote for the first time on Sunday.
“This time I want to see the real people who want to do something better for Thailand… A whole new government,” he added.
Her friend, 19-year-old Patita Wattananupong, also a first-time voter, nodded vehemently in agreement, saying that a few years ago, she had little hope that change would come to her country, but that her “hope is every bigger blow.”
In 2020, after the dissolution of a previous incarnation of Partit Avança, pro-democracy protests erupted, with tens of thousands of young people taking to the streets to demand change. The government crushed the movement, responding with mass arrests before demonstrations erupted as the pandemic raged.
The Thai government cracked down on youth-led anti-government protests in 2020 with mass arrests, although some demonstrations continued the following year, such as this one in Bangkok on March 24, 2021. The Constitutional Court ultimately ruled that the demands of reform of The Thai monarchy was unconstitutional and ordered the end of all movements. (Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP via Getty Images)
Pinda Puropakanonda, 32, told CBC News that “Thai society is broken.” He said people have now “woke up from the narrative they’ve been told all their lives, how they should respect the monarchy”.
Acting Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a former army chief who led the 2014 military coup, directly addressed the surge in support for structural reform at a campaign rally two days before Sunday’s vote.
“We don’t want a change that will overturn the country,” said Chan-o-cha. “You know what kind of damage it would do? We can’t change everything at once because we don’t know what’s next.”
There is still support for the conservative military establishment, especially among the older generation.
“I love Prayuth’s party. They love the king and they love the nation,” Muay Sae-Ue, 77, told CBC News moments after warmly greeting the local conservative candidate outside her fresh egg stall at Bangkok old town.
He believes that the younger generation does not like the King and this will “bring down our country”.
Muay Sae-Ue, 77, has been running her fresh egg stall in Bangkok since she was a child. She is a supporter of acting prime minister and former army chief Prayuth Chan-o-cha, because she loves “the king and the nation”. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)
‘It is enough’
For political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Move Forward’s “rise and push into the red” is a game changer that has made this election more consequential than ever.
Pongsudhirak thinks the war over which party can be more populist is over, and the new political battleground that demands attention is a deep structural reform of Thailand’s institutions: the military’s control of power, the role of the judiciary in the maintenance of the status quo and the dominant monarchy. .
“The democratic process in Thailand has always been crooked, repressed, subverted. And now there are people who say enough is enough,” said the professor of politics and international relations at Chulalongkorn University.
Political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak rates this election as unlike any other Thailand has seen due to progressive parties forcing issues such as reforms to the monarchy’s power. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)
The big question is what will happen after the vote: whether the pro-democracy parties will be able to form a government if they win big, or whether the military establishment will turn against them.
“I think a military coup would be the last resort,” Pongsudhirak said, because it would be difficult to rationalize and explain to the rest of the world.
“In the absence of a coup d’état, we have seen the dissolution of the party, so they could return,” he speculated. But if that happens, “you can bet that the [young supporters] they will rise and you will see them on the streets,” added Pongsudhirak.
“Yes [the military establishment] is preparing for another fight … then we will see more tension and confrontation, as we have seen for the last two decades.”
