From Deadlock to Dealmaking: Thailand’s Chaotic Search for a New Prime Minister

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has dismissed Paetongtarn Shinawatra from her position as prime minister over charges of serious ethical violations stemming from a private conversation with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen that surfaced in early June. Without an obvious successor, a leadership vacuum seemed inevitable. The People’s Party (PP) sought to break this impasse by offering to support any candidate willing to accept its conditions as the price of the premiership. Yet, that gambit, too, has set off a chaotic struggle for power.

When Paetongtarn was first suspended in July, this author wrote that her dismissal would amount to “little more than a constitutional formality,” anticipating that Thai politics and its players would have already moved on as though her premiership was over before the court even made it official. What this author failed to predict was how quickly the aftermath would spiral into an open contest for the premiership. By the evening of the verdict on 29 August, the Bhumjaithai Party (BJT) was already announcing a new coalition that coalesced behind its leader and prime ministerial candidate, Anutin Charnvirakul. The possibility of a smooth handoff to the Pheu Thai Party (PT)’s remaining prime ministerial candidate, Chaikasem Nitisiri, was ruled out even before it had a chance to rally MPs around his candidacy.

Part of this can be explained by the context in which the verdict was delivered, which made it far more destabilising than it might otherwise have been. The dismissal came sandwiched between a lèse majesté case against PT’s de facto leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, and another pending Supreme Court ruling on 9 September over whether his transfer and hospital stay upon returning to Thailand constituted an unlawful evasion of his prison sentence.

Border clashes with Cambodia that erupted in the period leading up to the ruling also gutted what little remained of the Shinawatras’ credibility. The clashes confirmed broader perceptions that the government led by PT — more precisely, Thaksin — is too compromised to take charge of a crisis that could have escalated from a falling out between the Hun and Shinawatra families.  Already weighed down by a string of failures to deliver on its policy promises, and with the ruling stripping it of any hold on power beyond the parliamentary seats it still clings to, the political climate has made it even more difficult for PT to recover its footing. These circumstances made it difficult to imagine that the coalition could stay united in support of another PT premiership.

Yet it was PP playing kingmaker that turned the coalition’s fragility into outright failure. Framed as an effort to prevent a deadlock, PP announced that it would support a prime ministerial candidate committed to reforming the constitution and dissolving the House within four months of delivering its policy statement to parliament. Once BJT declared its readiness to accept these conditions, the Kla Tham Party, along with factions from the United Thai Nation Party, the Democrat Party, and even MPs from within PT itself, broke ranks to declare support for Anutin. This left the PT-led coalition without a majority. PT’s missteps only worsened the haemorrhage: the party was slow to promote Chaikasem as a rival candidate and, as Chaikasem himself admitted, never even contacted him about stepping in as the nominee before 2 September. By the time PT followed suit and accepted PP’s conditions, albeit with some caveats, the momentum was already with BJT. On 3 September, PP confirmed this by announcing its support for BJT’s Anutin.

… weighed down by a string of failures to deliver on its policy promises, and with the ruling stripping it of any hold on power beyond the parliamentary seats it still clings to, the political climate has made it even more difficult for Pheu Thai to recover its footing.

In retrospect, voicing support for Anutin amounted to a dominant strategy for PP. PP would be in a stronger position to enforce its terms in what Mathis Lohatepanont describes as a confidence and supply agreement with a government led by BJT rather than one led by PT. The reason is simple: there is no formal mechanism to guarantee compliance with its conditions other than its bloc of 143 MPs. That leverage carries the most weight when the government it props up is smaller and more fragmented — and where the withdrawal of support could bring the entire administration down in a no-confidence vote. This would be the case in a BJT-led coalition: it will remain a minority government even if every partner from the former PT-led bloc defected to its side (assuming PP and PT stay out).

Nevertheless, PP and BJT are uneasy bedfellows. While PP has made clear it will not take any positions in a resulting government, Anutin’s path to the premiership still runs through PP. This is despite BJT having, until recently, cast itself as PP’s ideological opposite. BJT had opposed the push by the Move Forward Party — PP’s previous incarnation — to amend the lèse majesté law. The irony deepens when one recalls that the BJT-dominated Senate was once the chief obstacle to constitutional reform, which now stands as the non-negotiable condition for securing PP’s support.

Faced with this dilemma, PP may have been counting on PT to preempt this outcome by seeking House dissolution before the prime ministerial selection could occur and force a snap election. This would engineer the narrative that its backing of BJT was intended to force Pheu Thai into returning power to the people. While PT cannot expect to emerge unscathed electorally, a new election would still be potentially less damaging than handing Anutin the premiership. Once he attains the corridors of power, Anutin could, among other things, effect selective transfers and appointments of loyalist bureaucrats, gain control over budgetary disbursements ahead of a new election, and attempt to unravel the legal cases already stacked against his party. This may have been part of the calculation PT has made in moving to dissolve the House in response to PP’s announcement, despite legal ambiguity over whether acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai has the authority to do so in the first place.

The problem is that Pheu Thai’s request to dissolve the House has now effectively been nullified after its draft royal decree was returned by the Privy Council on legal grounds. This means the selection of a new prime minister is set to proceed with Anutin positioned as the frontrunner with PP’s backing and a BJT-led government on the horizon.

The question remains: is this the final arrangement that will install Thailand’s next prime minister? Can it really deliver on what its architects have promised? If it fails, who bears the blame — the party in power, or PP for making that government possible? Just as crucial is the remote prospect of a wild card: that PT, as a last resort, may strike a bitter deal with BJT and other conservative partners and throw its weight behind their candidates instead, leaving PP out to dry. How this unfolds will determine whether Thailand is witnessing a temporary recalibration that gives some space to reformist agendas, or merely a prelude to an outright restoration of the conservative status quo.

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