Thailand General Election: Thaksin Shinawatra’s Daughter Leads as Voters Seek Change

(CTN News) – The general election in Thailand has begun, and the leading candidate is the daughter of the country’s former prime leader, Thaksin Shinawatra.

After a dozen military coups in the last few decades, this election is being heralded as a watershed moment for the country.

General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who spearheaded the 2014 coup, is running for reelection as prime minister.

However, he has a formidable opponent in the form of two anti-military parties.

Early voting at the 95,000 polling locations around the country began at 8:00 am (01:00 GMT) on Sunday.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha Faces Strong Challenge in Thailand’s Election

There are almost 50 million eligible voters, and about 2 million have already voted early to elect 500 members of the lower house of parliament.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of Mr. Thaksin, and her party, Pheu Thai (For Thais), are currently in the lead.

The 36-year-old is capitalising on her father’s extensive patronage network and remaining true to the populist rhetoric that won over voters in the country’s rural, low-income areas.

Many middle and lower class Thais hold Mr. Thaksin in high esteem, but he is widely reviled by the country’s royalist elite. Corruption allegations led to his overthrow in a military coup in 2006. He has rejected the charges and has been in exile in London and Dubai since 2008.

Thailand’s Political Landscape: Struggles for Power and Reform

“I think after eight years the people want better politics, better solutions for the country than just coup d’etats,” Ms. Paetongtarn recently told the BBC.

Also on the upswing is the party Move Forward, which is being led by 42-year-old ex-tech executive Pita Limjaroenrat. The message of its youthful, progressive, and ambitious candidates has been clear and unambiguous: Thailand must undergo radical transformation.

And this transition isn’t about staging yet another coup. For the simple reason that it represents a step in the wrong direction. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor at Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies, thinks that the country needs to overhaul its military and monarchy to ensure a more prosperous and democratic future.

Meanwhile, 69-year-old Mr. Prayuth is falling behind in the polls. After months of unrest, he overthrew his brother-in-law Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration in 2014.

In 2019, elections were held in Thailand, and the results showed that no single party had secured a majority of the vote.

A pro-military party formed the government a few weeks later, with Mr. Prayuth as its prime ministerial nominee. The opposition claimed the process was unjust.

After doing well in the election with the help of young people, the previous edition of Move Forward, Future Forward, was disbanded the following year due to a contentious court judgement.

That set off six months of protests demanding changes to the country’s armed forces and monarchy.

There are approximately seventy parties running in this election, including several large ones, making it highly improbable that any single party would win a majority of the seats in the lower house.

However, the political structure left behind by the military-drafted 2017 constitution and a variety of other extra-electoral authorities can prohibit one party from entering administration even if it does not win a majority or has a majority coalition in place.

The constitution, which was drafted when Thailand was under military rule, established an appointed senate of 250 members with the power to elect the country’s next prime minister and cabinet.

The senators have always voted in favour of the present, military-aligned government, as they were all nominated by the coup leaders and have never voted in favour of the opposition.

In order to gain control of the House of Representatives without the support of the Senate, a party would require a supermajority of 376 votes out of 500 total votes cast.