announced the dissolution of Parliament, the opposition prepares for the elections

The former general and current prime minister has entered a new political formation, while Palang Pracharat, the ruling party, is in crisis. The pro-military movements will be opposed at the polls by the Pheu Thai and the Move Forward Party, both heirs to parties that were disqualified by the Constitutional Court.

Bangkok () – Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha announced on March 20 the dissolution of the Thai Parliament with a view to the elections on May 7, when the parties that inherited the 2014 military coup will compete with other political formations that from different ways oppose the control of the military and traditional elites of a country with more than 65 million citizens. The party currently in government (with a narrow majority), the Palang Pracharat -created after five years of military dictatorship by the same coup leaders who retrained themselves as civilian politicians- is in full crisis and the former general Prayut has joined a new formation -the Ruam Thai Sang Chart- for personal interests, not for its political line or because it presents proposals to get out of the crisis.

The pro-military movements will be confronted at the polls by Pheu Thai – headed by the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Paetongtarn, 36, who proposes support for the rural population, shared well-being and the restructuring of the forces armed forces and the power of the elites, and the Move Forward Party, heir to the Future Forward Party founded by businessman-marathon runner Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, which was dissolved two years ago by a Constitutional Court ruling. At the head of that party will once again be a young tycoon, Pita Limjaroenrat, who proposes modernity, progress, and disassociation of the country from the interests and leaders belonging to the elites.

Thai politics has so far been characterized by three elements. The first is the continuous succession of coups -sometimes bloody, sometimes not so much, but always liberticidal- that has marked the entire modern history of the Southeast Asian country. The second is the role of the monarchy and of the interests and oligopolies that rely on the military to keep the “Country of Smiles” in a state of incomplete development, which it has never been able to fully achieve despite its potential. The third element refers to the objective inability to govern of the generals, who not only did not fulfill the promises of welfare and development, but have tried to repress civil society and the political opposition without specifying that moralizing and ethical change that they proposed with the coup of May 22, 2014 (the twelfth since 1932).

The Palang Pracharat party – the most direct inheritor of the coup experience, in which a large number of senior officials were recycled – played a central role after the 2019 elections, the first in eight years. In the lower house, together with his allies, he obtained 247 seats out of a total of 500, while the upper house (of 250 members) is made up of personalities “appointed” by the armed forces. The system had to guarantee a long period of democracy to lead to “social peace”, after years of political tensions and clashes in the streets that began with the September 2006 coup against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Since voluntary exile, Thaksin has continued to play a key role in the parent groups of Thai Rak Thai, the party he founded and which was dissolved for alleged violations of electoral law. The Pheu Thai party had won in the 2011 elections, when it was headed by his sister Yingluck Shinawatra, but its fall, again in this case due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court, occurred shortly before the most recent coup. .