On May 14th, Thailand held general elections. The results were a shock to the Thai political system.
Since a 2014 coup, military leaders have dominated Thai politics. A mainstream opposition party has challenged military rule, but has been generally thwarted at every turn. However, this year a third party emerged victorious — and its vision for the country represents a radically progressive shift in Thai politics.
The Move Forward Party, lead by the charismatic Harvard and MIT educated 42 year-old Pita Limjaroenrat handily won the elections. And they did so by channeling a kind of progressive populism that can change Thailand’s domestic political culture and foreign policy in big ways.
On the podcast today is Prashanth Parameswaran, Fellow at the Wilson Center and founder of the excellent ASEAN Wonk Substack Newsletter. We kick off discussing the political context in which Move Forward won these elections. We then have an extended conversation about how the Military Junta rigged the Thai political system in such a way that the Move Forward Party may never actually be able to form a government — and even if they did, the threat of a coup would loom large. We then discuss what this election means in terms of Thai foreign policy and geopolitical competition in Southeast Asia between the US and China.
You can go here to listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred app.
