Thailand election: Voters head to the polls in high-stakes election

Jonathan Head
BBC South East Asia Correspondent

When Thais go to the polls today they will
be facing more or less the same choices they did last time, three years ago.

Once again a youthful reformist movement, the People’s Party – is advocating
far-reaching changes to Thailand’s political and economic structures – and opinion
polls have mostly put it and its leaders ahead of its rivals.

But it is facing a strong challenge from
incumbent prime minister Anutin Charvirakul, who has built his once small,
provincial Bhunmjaithai “Thai Pride’ party into the standard-bearer for Thai
conservatives. The third main contender is the
Shinawatra family and its Pheu Thai – ‘For Thais’ – party. In the past it
dominated elections, with well-marketed populist policies.

Both Pheu Thai and the reformists have been
subjected to intervention by the notoriously interventionist Constitutional
Court, and other unelected conservative institutions.

Two previous incarnations
of the People’s Party were dissolved by the court, and their leaders banned
from politics, despite winning the last election. Pheu Thai is expected to lose significant support in this
election after its last coalition administration was accused of mishandling a
conflict with Cambodia.

None of the big three parties is predicted
to win a majority of the 500 seats in the lower house of parliament. Another
coalition is inevitable. The biggest question hanging over this election is how
well the People’s Party performs. If it exceeds the 151 seats it won in 2023,
it may prove difficult to bar it from forming a government, despite great
unease about its radical agenda in conservative and royalist circles.

At that
point yet more intervention by the courts or other bodies is expected to weaken
or disable it as a political force. However, if Anutin can
match or exceed the seat total of the reformists, with the conservative
establishment behind him, he is very likely to remain as prime minister.