WORLD NEWS | Thai opposition sweeps elections to challenge military-backed conservative establishment

BANGKOK, May 15 (AP) — Thailand’s main opposition party handily beat other contenders, with nearly all votes counted in Sunday’s general election, satisfying the hopes of many voters that the vote would lead to the victory of incumbent Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. A key opportunity for change after nine years of Prayuth Chan-ocha first coming to power in a 2014 coup.

With 99 percent of the votes counted on Monday morning, the junior opposition Kadima Party narrowly edged out the favored Pheu Thai party, whose leaders earlier in the evening conceded they might not top the table.

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The winner of Sunday’s vote cannot secure the right to form a new government. The 500-seat House of Representatives will meet jointly with the 250-member Senate in July to choose a new prime minister, a process widely seen as undemocratic because senators are appointed by the military, not Elected, but the lawmakers who voted Sunday to win along with the military.

Voter turnout on Sunday was about 39.5 million, or 75 percent of registered voters.

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The maverick Kadima party won just over 24 percent of the popular vote in the 400-member House of Representatives and nearly 100 percent of the seats allocated nationwide to the 100 members of the proportional representation system. 36% of the vote.

Pheu Thai is slightly behind, with just over 23 percent of constituency seats and about 27 percent of party seats.

The tally of the constituency votes gave Move Forward 113 House seats and Pheu Thai 112, according to the Election Commission, which gave no forecast for the party-list seats.

Prayut’s National Unity Party ranked fifth in constituency voting with nearly 9 percent of the vote, but third in party preference statistics with nearly 12 percent. Its constituency voted it 23 House seats.

The three parties were considered the most likely to lead the new government ahead of the vote. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the 36-year-old daughter of former billionaire populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has been favored in opinion polls to be chosen as the country’s next leader.

Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old businessman, now looks like a likely candidate.

Prayut has been blamed for a sluggish economy, deficiencies in handling the pandemic and thwarting democratic reforms, a particular sore spot for younger voters.

The returns are a good sign of democratization, said Saowanee T. Alexander, a professor at Ubon Ratchathani University in northeastern Thailand.

“It’s people saying we want change…they’re saying they can’t take it anymore. People are very frustrated. They want change, and they can make it happen,” she said.

Move Forward has outperformed even optimistic forecasts, with the party appearing poised to capture all or nearly all of the 33 House seats in the capital Bangkok.

Along with Pheu Thai, it works for military and monarchy reforms. But Move Forward has earned a more aggressive reputation for putting these issues at the heart of its platform.

It has outspokenly supported minor reforms to the monarchy, while winning over younger voters and angering conservatives who see the royal institution as sacrosanct.

Pheu Thai is the latest in a string of parties linked to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a military coup in 2006. Pheu Thai candidate Paetongtarn is his daughter. The government of her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra, who became prime minister in 2011, was overthrown in a coup led by Prayuth.

Pheu Thai won the most seats in the last election in 2019, but its main rival, the military-backed People’s Power Party, managed to form a coalition with Prayut as prime minister. It relies on the unanimous support of the Senate, whose members were appointed by the junta after the Prayut coup and hold conservative views.

Ubon Ratchathani’s Alexander cautioned that the current situation remains “very unpredictable” and that the Election Commission could unilaterally influence the outcome. In the past, it has used its powers to disqualify opposition parties or otherwise weaken challenges to conservative establishments.

Move Forward’s Pita could be the target of what the opposition, based on bitter experience, calls a dirty trick. Last week, a candidate from the military-backed Palang Pracharath party filed a complaint with the Election Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission alleging that Peeta failed to list the stake in the statutory declaration of his assets. Peeta has denied any wrongdoing and the allegations hinge on a minor technical issue.

However, the leader of the Future Forward Party, the predecessor of the Kadima Party, lost his parliamentary seat for similar technical reasons and his party was eventually dissolved. It was also seen as a radical challenge to the military-backed royalist establishment. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)