Thailand’s Stolen Election

If the intent was to indefinitely prolong military rule over Thailand, which has been in place since a coup in May 2014, then the five-time delayed March 2019 election was a success. It was a masterclass in how to steal an election at every level: by drafting a new constitution, disbanding parties, gerrymandering, censoring the opposition, handpicking a Senate, and creating post-facto electoral rules to allocate seats.

While the polling was free, there was nothing fair about the process.

Thailand’s election results pave the way for an illegitimate regime and several more years of political unrest, only suppressed by the coercive powers of the state. The election coincided with the coronation of King Vajiralongkorn, who has proven to be an activist monarch willing to make his imprimatur on politics. If anyone was hoping that the election would end more than 13 years of partisan divide and constant military meddling in politics, they will be deeply disappointed.

How Did We Get Here?

For opponents of the current military regime in power, the election was about the return of power to civilian control. But for the regime, the intent of the election was to once again exorcise the influence of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose influence has loomed large in democratic Thai politics since his ascension to the premiership in 2001 despite the wishes of the military and royalist elite.

Though Thaksin himself was ousted in a 2006 coup d’etat and then eventually went into self-imposed exile, his Thai Rak Thai party and its successors have won every election held since 2001, with a brief interlude out of office that saw feckless rule by the Democrat Party from 2008 to 2011. Following this period, Thaksin’s younger sister, Yingluck, prevailed at the polls, but despite her attempts to reach out to the military and royalist elites, her government was seen as a proxy for the exiled Thaksin.

After a series of protests and prolonged political paralysis, on May 22, 2014, General Prayut Chan-o-cha staged a coup – the second in eight years – and removed Yingluck from power. Though the coup was welcomed by some as a reprieve amid the polarization that had ensued, there was always a risk that military rule would not only fail to solve the deeper underlying issues, but potentially worsen the situation still further.

Laying the Foundation for Prolonged Military Rule

The military promised that their rule and elections would heal the country’s deep divisions since the 2006 coup, but in reality military rule only exacerbated these divisions. It was soon abundantly clear that the National Council on Peace and Order (NCPO) had absolutely no interest in national reconciliation. “Happiness” was not “restored to the Thai people,” despite coup leader-turned-Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s crooning to that effect.

From the start, the military government was determined not to make the mistakes of the 2006-07 military regime, which they felt turned over power to a caretaker government and transitioned to democracy too quickly, without putting in place the constitutional safeguards to prevent Thaksin’s associates from returning to office.

Indeed, the junta set out from day one to figure out how it could hold on to power indefinitely, while still going through the process of holding elections. In short, the military sought to put in place a system in which they would not have to stage a coup again, but would control everything from within.

The military handpicked a rubberstamp Parliament, the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), over half of which were uniformed or retired military and police officials. The remainder were ultra-royalists. There was never any attempt to get broader societal representation, let alone from the political opposition.

The army, first under martial law and then under the draconian Article 44 of the 2017 constitution, used a host of coercive measures to crush the political opposition. Section 44 of the constitution gives the prime minister powers of preventative detention as well as absolute power to give any order deemed necessary to “strengthen public unity and harmony” or to prevent acts that undermine public peace.

Red Shirt activists and Pheu Thai leaders were “invited in for talks” or arrested. Many were tried in military courts. The junta imposed bans on political gatherings of more than five people. The regime used censorship, the rampant abuse of the Computer Crimes Act, and Article 112 of the penal code – the so-called lese majeste provisions – to silence dissent. During the campaign, the pro-Thaksin Voice TV station was shut down.

While the military cited government corruption as a justification for the coup, the NLA’s asset declaration made a farce out of any pretense that that coup was meant to rid the country of the corruption of Thaksin that they so decried. Instead, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) was used to box in the Pheu Thai. When the junta’s own deputy prime minister was acquitted of corruption, it was so brazen that three of five junta-selected commissioners voted against General Prawit Wongsuwan, and there were both public and political calls for the NACC commissioners to be impeached.

The 2017 constitution was drafted in a way to create all checks and no balance.

First, it transferred significant power from Parliament to unelected bodies whose membership is controlled by senior military officials and ultra-royalist elites, with virtually no accountability and oversight. One body that might have functioned as a check, the Electoral Commission, consistently bowed to the NCPO’s demands.

The constitution established a 250-person appointed Senate. The junta directly selected 194 members. Over half of those selected were senior military officers at the three- to four-star rank. Six other seats went to the heads of each of the military services and the police. The remaining 50 seats were chosen from among representatives of 10 societal groups after an opaque selection process that was marred by allegations of corruption.

After all that: 43 percent of the Senate consists of serving or retired military and police officers. The remainder are “good people,” code in Thai for ultra-monarchists. On May 6, 2019, some 15 members of the cabinet resigned in order to be appointed to the Senate. Roughly 60 NLA members transitioned from the rubberstamp Parliament to the military-appointed Senate.

Second, the constitution was designed to hurt large parties. The lower house has 500 seats, including 350 first-past-the-post members from geographical constituencies. The regime did several things to weaken the opposition. First, they reduced the number of seats from 375 to 350, consolidating districts that the Pheu Thai dominated and, at the same time, proliferated districts where the pro-junta Palang Pracharat Party (PPRP) was either polling well or had received important defectors from other parties. Other districts were flat out gerrymandered to help the PPRP.

Despite all of these measures to handicap the pro-junta party, the regime was still so insecure about the results that they delayed the elections five times, and gave in only when they tried to postpone polls yet another time, in contravention of their own election law, and were threatened with street protests.

But behind the election was always a safeguard encapsulated in the threat made by Commander in Chief of the Royal Thai Army, General Apirat Kongsompong, who warned of a coup if the elections went against the military's interests.

The New Electoral Landscape

The junta’s goal was to make sure no party got an outright majority, and that any government formed would be in a weak and unstable coalition, which the military could influence. Over 70 parties competed in the election, which by any measure was incompetently administered. The election was predicted to be a grudge match between the constitutionally hamstrung Pheu Thai and the newly created pro-military PPRP.

Pheu Thai broke itself into three parties poised to take advantage of the constitution and electoral laws that put large parties at a disadvantage. But their strategy also entailed taking an enormous risk, which if successful would have upended Thai politics. The Thai Raksa Chart – one of the pro-Thaksin parties – decided to run Princess Ubolratana as their prime ministerial candidate. She was a galvanizing figure: the daughter of the beloved monarch who passed away in October 2016, and sister of the current king; but also a close friend of Thaksin Shinawatra and a critic of military rule.

She was an inordinate threat to the military and could have unified the anti-junta parties, while peeling away some of the monarchists who were being drawn to the PPRP. In office, she could have used her power to amend the constitution and disenfranchise the military, and given her royal status, would be beyond overt criticism.

The military and ultra-monarchists went into overdrive, convincing the king to issue a letter denouncing her move, calling her decision “inappropriate” as the royal family is “above politics.” The Constitutional Court, acting at lightspeed, disbanded Thai Raksa Chart two weeks before the election and banned their executives from contesting the polls.

In the end, the military got what it wanted: No party won a majority of the seats, which would have been a humiliation. There were still some electoral surprises. While Pheu Thai won the most number of seats, it polled worse than expected, with only 136 constituencies. Its standing was diminished, in part, due to the decision to break into three smaller parties. Though Pheu Thai remained very strong in its traditional bastions in the north and northeast, it did terribly in Bangkok, a sign that many urban Thais are seeking post-Thaksin alternatives.

The PPRP won the second largest number of seats, 97, aided by gerrymandering, pre-election handouts, and other advantages of being the junta’s electoral vehicle. Nonetheless, it definitely cut into some of Pheu Thai’s vote.

The election proved to be a devastating loss for the Democrat Party, which sought to position itself as a kingmaker, in the likely event that no party garnered a majority of votes. It won only 33 seats, and is now a regionally based party.

The newly established Future Forward Party (FFP) polled extremely well, especially in Bangkok, where it became the voice for young urban professionals, picking off voters from both the Democrat Party and its coalition partner, Pheu Thai. Founded by a charismatic young billionaire, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, Future Forward campaigned on a an explicitly anti-military agenda, including cutting military budgets and amending the military-drafted constitution.

Despite not winning a majority of the seats, Pheu Thai and six coalition partners quickly declared victory and demanded the right to form a government. But the election results were not certified until after the May 6 coronation of the king.

Voter recounts were called in a few instances, but with little media oversight or any transparency, the Election Commission found additional ballots, remarkably, for the PPRP.

The junta quickly began to pressure the anti-military coalition. The government charged the leader of the Future Forward Party with sedition, and began his trial in a military court. He and other FFP leaders could potentially be disqualified and possibly imprisoned.  

The Coup de Grace

The Election Commission got to work to thwart Pheu Thai’s bid to form a government through the allocation of 150 party-list seats, which are supposed to be apportioned to the parties on the basis of their share of the overall vote. But the Election Commission post facto changed the mathematical formula that they used to calculate party list seats to hurt the larger parties. The Supreme Court validated the election commission’s formula for allocating party seats.

While it was a formula that made absolutely no mathematical sense, it made a lot of political sense to the junta.

The Election Commission awarded no party list seats to Pheu Thai, which won 22.3 percent of the popular vote and 136 seats. The commission took away at least seven party list seats that the FFP should have won. Shamelessly, it then allotted the PPRP, which won 23.7 percent of the popular vote and 97 constituency seats, 18 additional party list seats.

In keeping with the junta’s goal of creating very unstable coalitions, some 18 parties that together won no constituent seats and only 1.5 percent of the popular vote were then allocated 39 party list seats, or 26.2 percent of the total. Parliament now has 27 individual parties. In contrast the parliaments elected in 1996, 2001, 2007, and 2011 had nine, seven, nine, and 11 political parties, respectively.

Were the allocation of seats based on a traditional formula for their distribution, based on the percentage of the vote they received, at most only nine parties that contested the polls should even have been eligible (depending on the legal threshold). The Election Commission flat out stole seats from election winners and awarded them to election losers.

Surprising no one, 12 of the fringe parties that were allocated a party list seats demonstrated their fealty by immediately pledging their support for a PPRP government.

Forming the Government

Even with the questionable allocation of party list seats, Pheu Thai still won a plurality of seats and its leader, Sudarat Keyuraphan, should have the right to form a government. But the fix is in.

The results of the allocation of party list seats means that the seven party pro-democracy coalition holds only 245 seats. There are only 132 seats in the PPRP’s camp, with six parties, holding 121 seats, still undeclared. Should all six parties join the PPRP, it would have the right to form a government, though that outcome is unlikely. The Bhumjaithai Party, with 51 seats, is holding out, trying to wrest concessions from either side. The Democrat Party is in a bind whether to stand up for democracy and join its erstwhile enemies in Pheu Thai, or toss their lot in with the generals. While the latter may appeal to their base, it bodes poorly for their rebuilding, especially among the youth.

That is where the Senate comes into play. Both chambers elect the prime minister; thus 376 votes are needed.

In addition to the PPRP’s 97 seats and 18 party list seats, the junta knows that it can count on all 250 of the appointed Senators. The party list seats awarded to the fringe parties pushed them over with 382 seats. In short, if all six of the undecided parties joined the anti-military opposition, they would only have 366 seats and the PPRP could still form the government.

The Activist Monarch

There are suggestions that the king does not like Prayut, despite the latter’s total deference and acquiescence when the king consolidated the $40 billion in assets of the Crown Property Bureau in his own name, called for edits to the constitution, or continued to scandalize the public. Prayut’s deputy, the scandal-plagued General Prawit Wongsuwan, has been a constant embarrassment.

Despite the pageantry of the lavish three-day long coronation ceremony, the king commands little of the respect that his father did. He remains aloof, spending most of his time in Germany. He is mercurial and capricious. While some applaud what he has done to keep the military off balance, to date he has done little to broaden his appeal.

We have already seen the king directly involve himself in politics, belying the claim that the monarchy is above the political muck. On the eve of the vote, he was quoted as saying that Thais should  put “good people” in power and prevent “bad people from ... creating chaos.” He, as mentioned above, put the kibosh on his sister’s foray into politics.

While Prayut is likely to continue on as head of the PPRP government, there have been a host of rumors suggesting that a different prime minister could be appointed. Two names have been floated. Ampon Kittiampon, the former chairman of Thai Airways and one of the king’s most recent appointments to his Privy Council, has been suggested as a possible prime minister. While a staunch royalist, he served in various capacities in both the Democrat and Pheu Thai governments, as well as serving as an adviser to Prayut. The other potential outside choice is Dhanin Chearavanont, the head of the CP Group and the country’s wealthiest man.

By pushing for a government with an appointed prime minister, the king may be seeking to make his imprimatur on Thai politics and society by trying to resolve the political stalemate, sacrificing Prayut in the process. While that gambit poses some risks, the status quo poses its own. Not only does the king command far less loyalty and respect (over half the population sees the monarchy as having its thumb on the scale for military-backed government and intentionally holding back democracy), but at the very least, the monarchy is no longer seen as being an arbiter of Thai politics.

Army chief General Apirat Kongsompong is known to be close to the king, and has made clear that he will intervene in politics if he sees any threat to the monarchy. All this raises the question, can the military claim to be acting in defense of the monarchy when the institution is becoming a much less important and legitimate institution in the eyes of the public?

A Host of Challenges

While the anti-military parties have every reason to believe that the election was stolen from them, their seven party coalition controls 245 of 500 seats in the lower house, with several other parties potentially joining them. The military will no longer have carte blanche legislatively. Indeed, there are even early signs of infighting within the PPRP.

As such, we should expect the opposition to thwart the government from passing laws, the budget, and regulatory reforms, while demanding accountability, which the junta has avoided for five years. All that will have implications for a slowing Thai economy, in the midst of real competition from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian states.

More broadly, the challenges facing the new government are very real. 2018 saw a $9 billion outflow in foreign investments – both portfolio and direct investment. Foreign direct investment, according to the World Bank, fell from $14.8 billion in 2010 to $8.1 billion in 2017. $1.6 billion has outflowed in 2019 so far, signs that the business community is tiring of the Thai political stasis.

While economic growth increased from below 1 percent following the 2014 coup to 4.1 percent in 2018, much of that surge was pre-election giveaways and development projects; all things that the military claimed were unsustainable and fiscally irresponsible when Pheu Thai did them.

Moreover, the IMF disputes government data and argues that Thailand’s real GDP growth in 2018 was 3.5 percent, significantly lower than the 4.1 percent that Bangkok claims. Even Thailand’s claimed growth is still the second lowest in ASEAN and below the ASEAN average of 5.34; Thailand sits behind its peer competitors the Philippines (6.5 percent), Vietnam (6.5 percent), Indonesia (5.2 percent), and Malaysia (4.7 percent). Moreover, the IMF predicts that Thailand’s GDP growth rate will be under 3.7 percent through 2024, and the lowest of its peer competitors. The Thai ministry of finance is predicting 3.8 percent growth in 2019. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index for 2017-18, Thailand lagged behind Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

It is hard to imagine that a government acting in the interests of the ultra-monarchist elites is going to put in place any broad-based economic policies that will deal with income inequality, which has surged since the 2006 coup. That suggests that an already rocky road for Thailand’s economy could be even rockier ahead.

In Credit Suisse’s 2018 report on Global Wealth, Thailand’s Gini index, which measures income inequality, was at 90.2 percent. This was not only the highest in Southeast Asia (Indonesia at 84.0 was second), but among the highest in the world. While Thailand added some $40 billion in household wealth between 2017 and 2018, an 8.2 percent increase, the surge in wealth was highly concentrated. The World Bank found that the share of income held by the lowest 20 percent of the population only increased from 6.2 percent to 7.3 percent between 2010 and 2017.

The new government will have to deal with bread and butter concerns. While median wealth per adult increased from $550 to $1,085 per adult between 2000 and 2018, a 97.3 percent increase, debt per adult in that same period went from $484 to $2,887, a 497 percent increase. The IMF has also warned of very high levels of household debt as a percent of GDP.

The elections made clear that there is still a very deep rural-urban divide, even if it is not totally dominated by Red vs. Yellow shirts. With more than 9 million (13 percent of the total population) living in Bangkok and 14 million in greater Bangkok (22 percent), infrastructure and other government resources will continue to be concentrated there, further deepening the rural-urban divide.

Corruption remains a major impediment. According to Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, Thailand has fallen in the global ranking since 2014, when the junta took over.

These economic challenges are compounded by a series of systemic challenges coming down the pike, including demographics. Thailand’s fertility rate is 1.52, the second lowest in Southeast Asia, close to first-world Singapore’s. It has the highest median age in all of Southeast Asia at 37.2, even above Singapore, and the second lowest percent of population under 25 in all of Southeast Asia at just over 30 percent. Thailand's population growth rate is 0.3 percent, the lowest in Southeast Asia. In short, Thailand is experiencing first world challenges on a developing country budget.

The shrinking size of its labor force will drive up wages, but that’s not the only thing making the country less competitive. Thailand’s workforce is less educated. Despite the fact that education is the largest budget line item for the government, the politicized nature of education, and the inculcation of “Thai values” in the curriculum, continue to degrade the country’s educational edge.

There are other more specific problems as well. Thailand’s draconian new cyber law and push for data localization are going to drive away investment in the tech sector.  The poor climate for the country’s creative class is compounded by low levels of investment in R&D – only 0.6 percent of GDP in 2018 – and will continue to hurt the country's economic development.

Political risk, rule of law, and basic governance remain enormous challenges for a government hoping to win back investors. Thailand was ranked 86th of 178 in the 2017 Fragile States Index. Its score has fallen since 2010, the first year of the index, when it was ranked 81st. Among its peer economic competitors, only the Philippines fared worse. In certain categories of the survey, Thailand fares particularly poorly. It has the worst score in the region for “factionalized elites” and second worse for “group grievances,” behind Myanmar and tied with the Philippines. Thailand’s score for “state legitimacy” has steadily fallen, as has its human rights record.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Thailand has fallen in the global rankings of press freedom from 135th of 180 in 2013 to 140th in 2018. In Freedom House’s survey, Thailand has fallen from 50th in the world in 2006, when the last coup ousted Thaksin, to 77th in 2017. In 2015, Thailand fell behind Myanmar; only communist party-governed Vietnam and Laos have worse media rankings.

Meanwhile, there is declining confidence in Thailand’s justice system. The World Economic Forum gave Thailand a 4.1 of 7 for “judicial independence.” The Rule of Law Index, likewise, has shown steady decline since 2014 in the fundamental rights of the citizenry and the extent to which the governing are bound by the rule of law. Civil law saw a marginal improvement, but Thailand’s score for criminal law fell sharply, indicative of their politicization of law enforcement to target political opponents. One should only look at the botched investigation of the August 2015 Erawan Shrine bombing – two blocks away from police headquarters – to see how politicized the police have been, with a concurrent drop in their professionalism.

The government is going to be faced with growing environmental challenges as well. Bangkok is low-lying and sinking. The sea level in the Gulf of Thailand is rising faster than the global ocean average and the intensity of monsoons on the Thai coast has been increasing. Environmental issues of various kinds that are tied to governance, from land use to the fallout from specific infrastructure projects, have continued to haunt the country over the past few years.

Finally, the new government is going to have to confront a host of foreign policy challenges, including a deep rift with the United States, its treaty ally, while considering how deeply to tie itself to China, either militarily or as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI in Thailand includes a $12 billion railroad that many fear the country cannot afford.

Conclusion

The recent Thai election resulted in just what the military had machinated through their 2017 constitution: A situation where no one party dominated the polls, requiring fractious coalitions and multiple avenues for the military to apply carrots and sticks for their support. While the Thaksin machine has been weakened, new anti-military parties have filled the void. The opposition, feeling that the election was stolen from them and that the entire political-legal system is stacked against them, are incensed.

Should the regime reflexively continue to press charges against rising stars such as Thanathorn and move to disband or even penalize the Future Forward Party, there could be mass unrest. There is no evidence that the deep-seeded grievances of the opposition or the economic interests of the rural population will be addressed by the new government. The only avenue of recourse is for the opposition to be very disruptive in the next legislative session.

Given all this, one of the key questions that remains is how long it may be before the military-backed government has to resort to governing outside of the legislature. Indeed, having stolen an election and secured themselves in government, the military and ultra-royalist elites may find that they have little use for it.