If Pita Limjaroenrat was daunted by the sudden possibility of taking the helm of south-east Asia’s second-largest economy, the untested Thai opposition politician was certainly not showing it.
“I’m ready to be the next prime minister,” Pita, 42, declared on Monday, just 12 hours after preliminary results showed his Move Forward party had scored a sweeping victory in Thailand’s general election.
But while Move Forward’s success created a powerful platform to try to oust Thailand’s military-backed government, many obstacles still lie between Pita and the premiership.
The upstart progressive party will have to persuade more established opposition groups to co-operate in a coalition despite its radical reform agenda, while also avoiding any intervention by Thailand’s deeply conservative military-royalist establishment.
The election results “were a resounding verdict against military dominance in Thai politics and an unmistakable endorsement of change”, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “The conservative establishment is not going to be pleased with this outcome.”
The rise of Move Forward — which won 151 of 500 seats in Thailand’s lower house, according to preliminary results from the Election Commission — represents a decisive break in Thailand’s modern politics.
The party, which has taken up the mantle of a 2020 pro-democracy protest movement, rode the support of young and urban voters distrustful of the establishment and disaffected by a cycle of coups, unrest and crackdowns.
The party “opened a new frontier of Thai politics by focusing not just on populist policies to cater to the poor but also on structural reforms to the military, the monarchy and the economy”, Thitinan added. “Move Forward said: ‘We want to have a different kind of Thailand, a reformed, progressive kind of Thailand’, and yesterday the people said ‘yes’ to that.”
The election victory marked the steep ascent of Pita, who was educated at Harvard and MIT and took over his family’s agrifood business at the age of 25 after his father’s death. He later worked as executive-director at Grab, the Singapore-based rides and delivery superapp.
Pita also comes from a political background: his father was an adviser to the agriculture ministry, while his uncle worked as an aide to Thaksin Shinawatra, the billionaire telecoms magnate and populist former premier who was unseated in a coup in 2006.
His party’s charismatic standard-bearer, Pita starred in its deftly produced social media campaign videos, often alongside his seven-year-old daughter, garlanded with yellow flowers and joking with street vendors.
In Bangkok, the capital, Move Forward won 31 of 32 seats and fell short in its lost seat by just four votes, according to preliminary results.
The rival Pheu Thai party, Thailand’s leading opposition force for the last two decades, came second with 141 seats.
Before the election, Pheu Thai and its leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin’s youngest daughter, were seen as having the strongest chance of unseating the military — a calculus analysts said had now changed completely.
“Pheu Thai’s dominance has been broken,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a research fellow at the Singapore-based Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute. “Not only has it not been able to gain a new generation of voters, it has also failed to retain the older support base within its provincial strongholds.”
Move Forward made inroads across the country, including in Pheu Thai’s northern heartland cities of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. The new party also swept the island of Phuket, an establishment bastion.
“Move Forward’s victory shows that relying on patronage-driven local networks is no longer sufficient to guarantee victory,” said Ken Mathis Lohatepanont, PhD candidate in political science at the University of Michigan.
Parties backing the military-aligned government were humiliated. The newly formed United Thai Nation party of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha won just 36 seats, while the ruling Palang Pracharath party, led by Prayuth’s deputy and former army chief Prawit Wongsuwan, took 40.
Prayuth, who has ruled since seizing power from Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra in a 2014 coup, looks vulnerable. In an apparent concession of defeat, an official from the prime minister’s party on Monday said Move Forward should “be given a chance to form a government”.
Move Forward quickly launched talks with Pheu Thai and three smaller parties to form a coalition that would command 309 MPs. A humbled Pheu Thai on Monday said it would accept the invitation to join “the new government”.
But the proposed alliance would still fall short of the 376 seats needed to secure the premiership. Under Thailand’s 2017 army-drafted constitution, a 250-member junta-appointed senate votes alongside the lower house, giving the military establishment a big numerical advantage.
The opposition is wagering its popular mandate will dissuade the senate from blocking its candidate for prime minister or will convince other groups such as Bhumjaithai, a regional party that placed third, to come on board.
Co-operation could be complicated by Move Forward’s agenda, which includes ambitious reforms such as ending conscription to Thailand’s military, decentralising power and tackling corruption.
The party has also confronted the biggest taboo in Thai politics by calling for amendments to a lèse majesté law that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison for insulting the royal family.
Insistence on lèse majesté reform could fracture a broad opposition coalition, Napon said. Pheu Thai has appeared open to modifying the law, but Bhumjaithai and other parties oppose any amendment.
Pita faces other pitfalls. Thailand’s constitutional court in 2020 dissolved Move Forward’s predecessor party, Future Forward, which had come in third in a general election the year before. The dissolution helped spark protests that focused on the power and wealth of the monarchy. The ruling party has already filed a complaint with the election commission over Pita’s ownership of stake in a broadcaster.
Pita warned on Monday of “a hefty price to pay” if Sunday’s election was disregarded.
“If there is a systematic subversion of the vote . . . then the risk of unrest will mount,” Thitinan said. “The ball is in the conservative establishment’s court now.”
