Is Thailand Done With the Shinawatras?

Persistent political turmoil has a way of blurring the lines between change and continuity. So it is with Thailand, where veteran politician Anutin Charnvirakul was elected prime minister in a parliamentary vote Friday, convincingly defeating the ruling coalition’s preferred candidate. Anutin will be the country’s third leader in as many years.

His election caps off a week of drama and intrigue that began when the powerful Constitutional Court ousted his predecessor, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, ruling she had committed an ethical lapse during a leaked phone call in June with Cambodia’s former leader, Hun Sen. That incident prompted Anutin’s conservative Bhumjaithai party to withdraw from the coalition and position itself as an alternative to Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party.

Known as a well-connected dealmaker, Anutin was able to secure the support of the largest political party in the lower house of the National Assembly, the progressive People’s Party. He is expected to be sworn in in the coming days.

That leaves Pheu Thai, a dominant force in Thai politics for the past quarter century, looking increasingly diminished. It was once a populist machine driven by Paetongtarn’s father, the 76-year-old billionaire and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose political dynasty has won five general elections by positioning itself as a democratic counterweight to Thailand’s powerful military and royalist establishment.

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But in 2023, Thaksin made a fateful bargain with his establishment rivals, joining with them in a coalition to prevent the Move Forward Party—the predecessor to the People’s Party, which won the largest number of votes in that year’s election—from taking office and enacting a series of far-reaching reforms. That triggered a political reckoning, as Pheu Thai’s support dropped and lawmakers left the party.

Thaksin has also faced legal troubles stemming from a controversial monthslong hospital stay that allowed him to avoid a prison term. With the Supreme Court set to issue a final ruling in the case next week, Thaksin left the country Thursday claiming he was seeking medical treatment in Singapore. But flight tracking data showed his plane abruptly changing course and landing instead in Dubai.

Thaksin’s attorney says he will attend his court session in person. But his sudden departure, combined with his party’s defeat in parliament, suggest that even if he returns, his influence will be far more limited than it was before. “For all intents and purposes, the Shinawatra family is politically spent,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, told Reuters.

The political configuration that comes next, a minority government led by Anutin’s Bhumjaithai, does not look especially stable. In order to secure the People’s Party’s support, Anutin committed to dissolving parliament within four months so that new elections can be held and starting a long-overdue process to amend the country’s 2017 constitution, which was enacted during military rule.

But Bhumjaithai is widely seen as pro-military and pro-monarchy. Anutin may opt to renege on his deal or try to cobble together a new governing majority without the People’s Party’s support. Another prolonged period of political infighting may prompt the military to intervene again, as it has many times before. As ever with Thai politics, chaos is the only constant.

Elliot Waldman is World Politics Review’s editor-in-chief.

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