It has been a great week for conservatives in Asia, starting with a landslide victory in Japan. But Sunday’s election in Thailand delivered a bigger upset.
Thailand turns right
When Thailand’s prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul woke up on Sunday morning, all the polls pointed to a defeat for his conservative Bhumjaithai party at the hands of the progressive People’s Party. But when the votes were counted that evening, he had won a remarkable victory with 193 of the 500 seats in parliament, far ahead of all his rivals.
Anutin will need a coalition partner or two and it could be April before Thailand has a new government. But the 59-year-old businessman who was appointed to lead a minority government last November is on course to become the first Thai prime minister in two decades to be returned to office in an election.
Thai voters have good reason to be unhappy with their government, which has presided over one of the lowest rates of economic growth in southeast Asia. The World Bank expects the economy to grow by just 1.7 per cent in 2026 and the Bank of Thailand warned last month that the country is becoming less competitive.
Household debt is high, the baht is overvalued against other currencies and exports face a 19 per cent tariff from the United States, or 40 per cent on goods shipped through the country. Meanwhile, fewer Chinese visitors and increased competition from regional rivals have hit the tourism industry.
Anutin owes part of his success to a wave of nationalist feeling that followed Thailand’s three-week conflict with Cambodia last December. He promised to strengthen the Royal Thai Army, which received a popularity boost, and to build a wall along the border with Cambodia.
The biggest losers in the election were the People’s Party, a youthful, progressive party that polls predicted would come out on top. The party is a successor to Move Forward, which won a general election in 2023 but was blocked by military-appointed senators from forming a government and later dissolved by the constitutional court.
The party’s offence was to campaign against Thailand’s severe lèse-majesté law which says that anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir-apparent or the regent” will be punished with a jail term of between three and 15 years. The United Nations has called repeatedly for the repeal of the law, with a report last year accusing the authorities of using it to detain and imprison activists and human rights defenders.
Thailand’s king Maha Vajiralongkorn acceded to the throne after the death in 2016 of his father Bhumibol Adulyadej, an immensely popular figure who reigned for more than 70 years. In July 2017 Vajiralongkorn obtained direct control of the royal assets worth an estimated $40 billion (€33.5 billion), making him the world’s richest monarch.
He spends much of his time in Bavaria and a constitutional amendment adopted in 2017 allows him to travel abroad without ceding power temporarily to a regent. In 2019, he transferred two elite army regiments from the regular chain of command to the direct control of the royal security command.
The People’s Party has abandoned the campaign to amend the lèse-majesté law but it supported Anutin’s minority government last year in return for the promise of a referendum to start the process of constitutional reform. The referendum passed on Sunday but there will be no constitutional reform under Anutin, who identifies closely with the military, the monarchy and the courts which have removed five prime ministers from office during the past two decades.
Yesterday, People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut was among 44 former Move Forward legislators found guilty by the National Anti‑Corruption Commission of failing to uphold the democratic system and damaging the dignity of office holders by seeking to amend the lèse-majesté law. If the ruling is upheld by the supreme court, Natthaphong and nine of his colleagues elected on Sunday could lose their seats and be barred from standing for election again.
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