Three main parties and two directions

Although Thailand's election campaign is reaching fever pitch ahead of voting day on Feb 8, the dynamics and contours of its final outcome can be gleaned from past polls over the last 25 years.

- Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Yodchanan Wongsawat, prime ministerial candidate for the Pheu Thai Party, right, and Paetongtarn Shinawatra, a former premier, are seen during a rally in Bangkok on Jan 8. The country is gearing up for a general election on Feb 8.

(BLOOMBERG)

Only once in January 2001, as was indicated in this space last week, were voter results fully honoured and carried out. Other elections were either upended by military coups or manipulated by judicial interventions.While the same trend appears in train this time, it is instructive to examine each of the three main contesting parties in view of the broader development in Thailand's political party system.

The main reason Thai political parties have been weak is that they have been systematically kept off balance and on the back foot. Any party that gained critical strength and popularity has invariably been diluted or decimated by unelected political forces. Along the way, a conventional narrative has been constructed and popularised to paint political parties and elected politicians as electoral scumbags bent on corruption and graft. In a shady game of money politics, politicians buy votes from gullible and ignorant upcountry folks to secure cabinet posts and recoup their investments with heaps of returns from graft. The anti-politician narrative in money politics, in turn, regularly lays the groundwork for duly justifiable military seizures of power and, more recently, judicial decisions to determine political directions.