Thailand’s pro-army Palang Pracharat Party was yesterday looking for coalition partners from a wide field of potential allies as it seeks to keep military junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led a 2014 coup, in office as prime minister.
The party is expected to easily form the next government, as it needs only a few more votes in the Thai House of Representatives to choose the prime minister under complicated new electoral rules written by the military regime.
Palang Pracharat is expected to be joined by the Democrat and Bhumjaithai parties, as well as 11 other smaller parties that are not affiliated with either the pro-army camp or the Democratic Front of parties opposing the military, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University political scientist Yuttaporn Issarachai said.
“Prayuth will certainly be prime minister” under this scenario, he said, but added that the government would likely be unstable, with only a slim majority in the House.
Democratic Front leaders have cried foul and threatened legal action, saying that the electoral system and the Thai Election Commission were biased toward extending the military regime.
Election officials and Palang Pracharat have denied the accusation.
The Democratic Front of seven parties is led by the Pheu Thai Party loyal to exiled former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
Pro-Thaksin parties had won every election since then, but each time saw their governments ousted by legal rulings and coups.
In the latest intervention, the military in 2014 toppled a government that had been led by Thaksin’s sister, former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
It still could be weeks before a new government is formed, even though the pro-junta party is in a favorable position.
The Palang Pracharat Party’s most obvious potential allies are the pro-establishment Democrat Party and the Bhumjaithai party, which campaigned on marijuana legalization among other issues.
The Democrats won 52 seats and Bhumjaithai 51, meaning that either could push Palang Pracharat, which won 115 seats, well over the magic number of 126 votes needed in the House to approve the prime minister under the new system.
Democrat Party spokesman Thana Chiravinij told reporters that it would meet next week to decide whether it would join with Palang Pracharat in government or form an “independent opposition.”
However, he said that the Democrats would never join the Democratic Front, because it is led by the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai.
Bhumjaithai leader Anutin Charnvirakul was not available for comment, but said on Facebook that the party “is still listening to the people.”
The new post-coup constitution calls for the 250-seat Thai Senate, appointed entirely by the junta, to vote along with the 500-seat elected House to choose the prime minister.
Involving the Senate effectively gives pro-army parties a head start of 250 votes to get to the required majority of 376 in the combined House and Senate vote.
“Thailand isn’t returning to democracy,” Ubon Ratchathani University Faculty of Political Science dean Titipol Phakdeewanich said.
“The election was a whitewashing effort for the military to stay in power so that they can tell the international community that they are an elected government,” he said.
The Democratic Front also said that it was denied what it had expected to be majority of 255 seats in the House when the commission decided to use a new formula in allocating seats.
The new formula gave 11 tiny parties one seat each, with most of them taken from the anti-military Future Forward Party, part of the opposition alliance.
Under the new formula, the Democratic Front won 245 seats in the House — just short of the majority it had hoped would give it leverage to block legislation if Prayuth remained prime minister.
Pheu Thai on Wednesday said that it would use every legal channel to fight the commission’s formula.
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