Bad news. The red shirts (the party I’ve been calling neoliberal populists) announced today that they’ve formed a coalition with the military dictatorship parties. This, with the military-appointed senate will give them enough votes to name a Prime Minister.
It’s a stab in the back for more than the Future Forward (orange shirt/progressive) party. It’s a betrayal of a big portion of their constituency, who are staunchly anti-dictatorship, anti-royalist. It’s unclear how the numbers shake out now, but it seems like half the Red Shirt voters are happy that their side gets to be in charge, even though they came in second, and the other half feel completely betrayed. Hard to say if the split is 50/50, 60/40, or 80/20.
A celebrity architect tweeted a few weeks ago that he was so sure his beloved Red Shirt part wouldn’t form a coalition with the dictatorship that you could throw shit at his head if he’s wrong.
In terms of the actual will of the Thai people, this likely means the red shirts will lose a chunk of their base to the Future Forward (orange shirts/progressive). Even if they only lose 20%, Future Forward already got 30% of a vote where 70% of the country turned out. If Thailand were a democracy, this would only be increasing Future Forward’s power down the line.
But it’s not a democracy.
Future Forward will likely be made illegal in the coming months. The party will then reform. The vote to replace the military-appointed Senate is next year, and Future forward wold probably get to pick about 40%-50% of the seats (way more than any other party. So, the Red/Yellow coalition will probably pass a law saying that only parties that have existed for longer than a year can be considered for senate.
In terms of protest, it’s good that the Red Shirt base is feeling betrayed. There may be less of a split among populists than I feared, which means a real protest movement can form. Problem is, it doesn’t feel very concentrated right now. A military-backed PM probably means that most of the old leadership will be gong to jail for 15 years or more.
The recent protests against this soft coup were actually pretty big though. They would probably look massive by American standards. Thousands of people, though I don’t think over 10,000. Though they were also during work/school hours and fairly spontaneous, so that’s a good sign.
The most troubling thing is that the military is doing such a good job of dragging things out and not creating specific flash points that can make people spontaneously lose their cool. There’s so much tinder, but the dictatorship is trying to keep it damp and make sure there are no sparks.
Let’s see though. There was a big upswing in protests when they made Future Forward’s previous incarnation illegal. Doing it for a second time may have the same effect. You just have to worry about people giving up hope.