Thailand’s royalists foiled Harvard grad Pita Limjaroenrat’s first attempt at becoming prime minister. Here’s what happens now

Thailand’s Pita Limjaroenrat may get another shot at the country’s prime minister job next week.

But his path to potential power remains unclear, especially if the leader of the country’s Move Forward Party does not budge from his election pledge to amend a law that prohibits criticism of the monarchy.

Limjaroenrat fell 51 votes short of the majority he needed from the 749 members of Thailand’s bicameral National Assembly for the top job in a first parliamentary vote on Thursday.

While he secured 311 votes from his eight-party coalition, he only gained 13 of 250 in the Senate — an entity created by the royalist military after a coup in 2014 and stacked with conservative royalists.

While this development was widely expected, the deep divisions underscore the royalist senators’ mistrust of Limjaroenrat and his Move Forward Party’s anti-establishment agenda, while also highlighting the risk of prolonged political turmoil in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.

“Should there be a protracted delay in the formation of a new government, or if the eventual prime minister is not seen to have a popular mandate, it could drive a resurgence of large scale protests,” Grace Lim, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a Friday research note.

“Persistently elevated political tensions could erode the credibility and effectiveness of Thailand’s institutional frameworks, particularly if these tensions reduced the authorities’ ability to effectively execute macroeconomic policy and respond to long-term issues, including ageing and labor skills,” she added.

Another vote is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday. Forty-two-year-old Pita, who attended Harvard Kennedy School, will be able to stand for prime minister if nominated again by his eight-party alliance.

Otherwise, Pheu Thai — the second-largest party in the eight-party coalition with Move Forward — may also put forward its own candidate from among the three candidates the party had earlier surfaced.

They are Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of the exiled populist ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra; former property tycoon Srettha Thavisin and Chaikasem Nitisiri, the party’s chief of strategy and political direction.

On Thursday, many senators voiced their objections against Move Forward’s plan to amend Article 112 in Thailand’s criminal code, commonly referred as its lèse-majesté law. Some allege that the wording of the amendment the party submitted a few years ago seems to suggest they plan to dismantle the law entirely.

Move Forward has denied this allegation, and reiterated it only intends to revise some parts to prevent its abuse as a political mechanism.

“But again even revising some parts, the conservative parties and the older generation could not accept that. And I don’t think they will change their position on this,” Punchada Sirivunnabood, an associate professor of politics at Bangkok’s Mahidol University, told CNBC Friday.

Move Forward’s proposed amendments to the lèse majesté law reportedly include a drastic reduction in the prison sentence from the current 15-year maximum to just a year for defaming the king, and six months for defaming the queen, heir or regent.

Thailand’s young is deeply disenchanted with the country’s royalist military establishment partly because the lèse-majesté law was invoked against several young protesters in 2020. About 250 of the 1,914 prosecutions linked to the 2020 protests were under the lèse-majesté law, according to the group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights — with many minors among these cases.

Speaking to Reuters after Thursday’s vote, Limjaroenrat said senators could not vote freely and he would re-strategize to try to convince them to follow the will of the people.

“Many were not voting as they wished. I understand there is a lot of pressure on them, and incentives,” he said, without elaborating. “I think there is still time to get more votes.”

Late on Friday, Move Forward Party lawmakers sought to bar the junta-appointed senators from participating in the subsequent vote for prime minister, by proposing an amendment to Article 272 of the junta-sponsored constitution.

There are significant hurdles for the amendment to pass. Move Forward will need at least 376 votes from the National Assembly, which must include approval from one third of senators and at least 20% of the votes from opposition parties.

Campaigning on an ambitious structural reform agenda targeting the country’s monarchy, monopolies and military, Move Forward won a surprise majority at May’s elections — propelled by the votes of younger Thais. Along with the Pheu Thai Party, Move Forward had swept aside many conservative politicians after nine years of military rule.

These aims essentially extended the goals of student protests more than two years ago that were triggered by the dissolution of Future Forward — Move Forward’s predecessor entity — which was highly critical of outgoing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, the former military general who seized power in a 2014 coup and made changes to the Thai constitution in 2017.

Move Forward’s slim majority though has rendered its agenda vulnerable to the machinations of the institutions it is seeking to reform, along with the interlocking patronage networks that remain despite the ouster of several influential business families in this election.

“Key risk remains with the outcome of the constitutional court’s rulings on Pita’s election qualifications and whether the MFP’s policy for royal defamation law amendment was constitutional,” Citi economist Nalin Chutchotitham wrote in a Friday note.

A day before Thursday’s vote, Limjaroenrat was rocked by a fresh complaint lodged against him to Thailand’s constitutional court, accusing Move Forward’s plan to reform the lèse-majesté law as tantamount to “overthrowing a democratic government” with the king as head of state.

This came hours after the Election Commission recommended that the same court disqualify Limjaroenrat as member of parliament, after it confirmed the validity of a complaint that he violated electoral rules with his ownership of shares in a defunct media company he inherited from his late father.

Both developments bear an uncanny parallel to events that led to the dissolution of Future Forward that involved the court disqualification of its leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit for failing to declare his shares in a media company. Piyabutr Saengkanokkul, a constitional law scholar and professor who was also Future Forward’s secretary-general, was also disqualified from politics at the party’s dissolution.

“Nothing is going to change,” Mahidol’s Sirivunnabood said. “What Thanathorn and Piyabutr faced a couple years ago is going to happen to Pita again.”