With another controversial ruling, Thailand’s Constitutional Court has once again returned the country to a new era of political stasis and uncertainty. Yesterday, the court voted 5-4 to dismiss Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin from office for a minor “ethical violation,” relating to the appointment to his cabinet of an official who had previously served a prison sentence for bribing a court official.
Srettha, speaking shortly after the verdict, said he respected the ruling and always sought to act ethically during his time in office, which fell just short of a year. “I’m sorry that I’d be considered as a prime minister who’s unethical, but I’d like to insist that I believe that is not who I am,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
The Constitutional Court’s decision is just the latest in a long line of significant interventions in Thai politics, and came a week after another ruling that disbanded the Move Forward Party, the largest party in the Thai parliament, and banned 11 of its executives from politics for 10 years.
The lopsided mismatch between the alleged ethical transgression and the punishment echoes the Constitutional Court decision of 2008 that dismissed Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej for hosting a cooking show. (The Constitutional Court also ruled in 2021 that Deputy Agriculture Minister Thammanat Prompao could keep his post in Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s cabinet, despite reportedly being jailed in Australia for trafficking heroin.)
The verdict, which has been roundly denounced by opposition parties and human rights groups, offered a reminder of where power really lies in Thailand: not with democratically elected leaders but with a powerful “network monarchy,” as scholar Duncan McCargo has described it, acting through the military, a pliant judicial branch, and other state institutions.
The decision is seemingly related to the political pact between the conservative establishment and Srettha’s Pheu Thai party, which allowed the party’s patriarch, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who returned to Thailand after more than 15 years of self-exile after the general election of May 2023. In exchange for Thaksin’s return (and the rapid dilution of his eight-year prison sentence for corruption), Pheu Thai agreed to join with military-backed and conservative parties to form a new government under Srettha, a real estate mogul with no previous experience in politics. The purpose of the pact was to blunt the more radical threat posed by Move Forward, which had won a plurality of votes at the election.
However, Thaksin has since flaunted his newfound freedom, traveling across Thailand, meeting with local politicians, and even offering his services as a mediator of the conflict next door in Myanmar. Far from a narrow concern about ethical conduct, yesterday’s verdict was a veiled signal to Thaksin to keep his political ambitions confined to a narrow terrain. Also hanging over Thaksin is a lese-majeste charge relating to a newspaper interview he conducted in 2015, on which he was formally indicted in June.
Whether or not Pheu Thai remains the main force in government remains to be seen. Srettha’s Cabinet will remain in place on a caretaker basis under first Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, pending Parliament’s approval of a new prime minister. Parliament has already scheduled a vote for Friday, though there could be more than one round of voting before a final selection is made. The caretaker Cabinet could also dissolve Parliament and call a new election, though that remains unlikely, given that the newly formed People’s Party – the rebranded Move Forward party – could well prevail.
The question then turns to the question of who will replace Srettha, and what complexion the new government will have. Crucially, the Senate’s role in the selection of the prime minister – its military-appointed members helped block the Move Forward from forming government after last year’s election – expired when its term came to an end in May. This means that a simple majority of 251 votes in the House of Representatives is all that is necessary to anoint the new PM.
However, as Ken Mathis Lohatepanont noted yesterday in an analysis for the Thai Enquirer, the 2017 Constitution restricts the vote to those prime ministerial candidates that were submitted at last year’s election, and whose parties won at least 25 seats. This narrows down the choice to just seven candidates: Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Chaikasem Nitisiri from Srettha’s Pheu Thai party, Anutin Charnvirakul from Bhumjaithai, Prawit Wongsuwan from Palang Pracharath, Prayut Chan-o-cha and Pirapan Salirathvibagha from the United Thai Nation Party, and Jurin Laksanawisit from the Democrats. Conveniently, Pita Limjaroenrat of the now-defunct Move Forward party – by some wide margin the most popular choice for PM in the country, according to recent polls – is ineligible after being banned from politics last week.
Of these seven, two initially seemed to be in pole position: Paetongtarn, the youngest daughter of Thaksin, and Anutin Charnvirakul from Bhumjaithai, which came in third in last year’s election. However, this morning brought reports that the Pheu Thai was preparing to nominate Chaikasem, a 75-year-old who served as minister of justice in the government of Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra during 2011-2014, in tomorrow’s parliamentary vote.
Whoever ends up assuming the prime ministership, the result will still be only a vague representation of the will of the Thai electorate. This month’s court rulings are a dispiriting reminder that no matter the result of elections, political outcomes will eventually be trimmed and shaped to conform to the interests of the country’s remote and unaccountable “network monarchy.”