Another wasted year in Thai politics

As Thailand winds down 2025 with an early election looming on Feb 8, the most consequential issue to watch in the coming year will be whether recent topsy-turvy political patterns of polls, protests, and military and judicial interventions give way to a compromise between the old guard clinging on to vested interests and the new generation clamouring for reform and change.

- Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Caretaker Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, the Bhumjaithai Party leader and its sole prime ministerial candidate, poses for a photo during an event on Wednesday to unveil policies ahead of the February general election.

(REUTERS)

The next poll already shows characteristics of its precursors in 2019 and 2023, with incumbency advantages lining up behind the caretaker minority government of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.

If his Bhumjaithai Party comes out on top convincingly, it will likely form a stable coalition government based on provincial patronage and pork-barrelling allocation of cabinet portfolios with patchy performance, similar to the military-backed government after the March 2019 poll. If the reform-driven People's Party somehow emerges with a large winning margin, the political climate could be contentious and controversial, much like the aftermath of the May 2023 election. Clearer prospects and likelihoods will be discernible next month in the final lead-up to the vote.

The election timing has moved up slightly but not unexpectedly. Mr Anutin had put up a four-month timetable with a lower house dissolution at around the end of January and polling day by the end of March in accordance with a "memorandum of agreement" to obtain backing from the People's Party. Although it was thought that Pheu Thai, in view of its rift with Bhumjaithai, would be the opposition party to put dissolution pressure on the acting prime minister, it turned out to be the People's Party, which concluded that Mr Anutin was not serious about following through with charter reform.