In the past week, I’ve done a few interviews on former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s release from prison last Monday. I wanted to gather together some thoughts into a full post. As such, there will be no Morning Coffee Briefing this week — my apologies!

I also recently wrote a piece for Latitude Ten on how Thailand is a nation of self-help books: check it out here.

From resilience to rejection

In 1996, Thaksin Shinawatra led the Palang Dharma Party into a general election. The previous year, the party had won 23 seats in parliament — a respectable number, although lower than in recent elections. But the 1996 general election proved to be fatal. Palang Dharma won only one seat. It was a mortal wound: the party would never win a seat again in an election. Thaksin felt compelled to resign from the party leadership.

Leading a party to such an electoral defeat would probably be fatal to most politicians. But of course, just five years later Thaksin would lead his new Thai Rak Thai Party to what was at that point the biggest election victory in Thai democratic history. 2001 marked the beginning of what Jonathan Head and Hataikarn Treesuwan call the “Thaksin era,” something that they note “is now almost certainly over.”

Whether or not the Thaksin era is over is a matter for legitimate debate. The former prime minister has proven to be one of the most resilient characters of Thai politics, with him and his family surviving two coups and several unfavorable judicial rulings. Thaksin has proven perfectly capable of getting up when he is knocked down: the 1996 election is firm evidence that he can never be counted out. His return to Thailand in 2023 was another example of a previously-unimaginable comeback.

Indeed, can you think of another politician who has been as politically relevant as him for as long? When Thaksin first entered politics in 1990s, the major political players were men like Chuan Leekpai, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Banharn Silpa-archa, and Chamlong Srimuang. Banharn is dead; Chavalit and Chamlong have long retired from politics. Only Chuan remains an active politician, but as a backbencher. The sheer length of Thaksin’s level of influence is virtually unprecedented.

But the challenges that now lie against him do put into question whether or not a comeback will finally elude one of Thailand’s most wily politicians.

The question is thus: can a “Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai acts” approach to politics still work? The Thaksin-fueled Pheu Thai brand was built on an anti-status quo orientation and generous economic schemes. But it appears that the Pheu Thai playbook has finally been exhausted. Ironically, the dealmaking of Pheu Thai in 2023 may have lost some of its political resonance, given that Thaksin has now served his prison sentence and the People’s Party engaged in curious dealmaking of its own in 2025. But its latest tenure in government was in its own terms damaging to the party brand. Its signature 10,000 baht giveaway scheme was delivered only partially, and the economy was lackluster at best.

Unfortunately, the party appears to have run out of ideas and ways to make people talk about their ideas. Twenty-five years ago Thai Rak Thai’s policies and campaigning methods were a novelty. Now they are commonplace, and room to innovate has narrowed considerably. Recall that this year, their flashiest election pledge was a proposal to give one million baht to nine people a day. In elections past it would have been one of the central talking points of the campaign. Remarkably, this proposal faded from the headlines rather quickly, and few still discuss it today. Pheu Thai’s ability to control the national conversation simply is not what it once was.

And all of this is before we even consider the baggage that comes up with the Shinawatras. Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s premiership ended in deep controversy over her phone call with Cambodia. (That was enough for me to write in July 2025 that this signaled the end of the family’s political dominance). Thaksin himself remains a deeply polarizing figure, someone who can inspire enough hatred that tens of thousands of people came out to protest against him, his brother-in-law, and his sister in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Which brings us to where we are today: a party suffering from a precipitous decline. Take a look at the trend of Pheu Thai’s electoral performance in the past three elections where there was a two ballot system. The trend of decline is starkly visible. Between 2011 and 2026, Pheu Thai has lost about 10 million constituency votes and 8 million party-list votes. This gives us all the information we need about the declining efficacy of Pheu Thai’s electoral strategy.

Pheu Thai has clearly lost its luster even in the strongholds where the Shinawatra brand had counted most. Consider results in the last general election. The party lost major ground in the Northeast to Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham and in the North to Kla Tham and the People’s Party. In former strongholds, the results were devastating. Take Chiang Mai, Thaksin’s birthplace, for example. This was a province where Pheu Thai won 65 percent of the vote in 2011. They had lost a lot of ground in 2023 to Move Forward. Shockingly, they were completely wiped out this year.

Pheu Thai as a mid-sized player

The fundamental question facing Pheu Thai is this: is it satisfied with being a mid-sized party? Some media reports have said that it is. Already, we are seeing signs of retrenchment. The party, for example, will not be officially fielding councillors in the Bangkok local elections, even as it allows some candidates to use the party logo. This comes just four years after Pheu Thai became the largest party on the Bangkok Metropolitan Council.1

Being a medium-sized party with anything between 30 to 80 seats is not an impossible task, as long as they prevent valuable local factions from jumping ship. In this scenario, Pheu Thai could remain a relevant political player for years to come. Like Bhumjaithai or Chart Thai in the past, it could be an indispensable coalition partner that makes up the numbers for a majority and does not put too much of a fuss about the terms of joining a government. Yet this is a hazardous path. Mid-sized parties focused on just a few provinces or regions find it difficult to generate national krasae2 and thus tend to become smaller over time. The example of Chart Thai Pattana is a cautionary tale; the more it became identified with Suphanburi, the less viable it became outside the province. And the less powerful a party becomes, the more difficult the task of holding on to the local clans that are so important to powering constituency victories.

If it is not satisfied with medium-power status, however, we are not yet seeing Pheu Thai take any steps that would pave the way for a broader revival. Today in coalition with Bhumjaithai, Pheu Thai has limited opportunities to reinvigorate its own brand. It can hope that the latest member of the extended Shinawatra clan to hold high office, Deputy Prime Minister Yodchanan Wongsawat, will perform well and win back the party some votes. This could still work; few have strong opinions on Yodchanan, who is relatively fresh to the political scene. Yet Thai history is littered with examples of coalition partners hoping to “generate results” and then unfortunately finding that no one took notice.

But what would a path returning to greatness look like? The party’s existence has been so intertwined with Thaksin that it is virtually impossible to think of the party without Thaksin. But it is also increasingly difficult to think of a path forward for the party with Thaksin at the fore. To put it simply: Thaksin reminds people of the past. It is now 25 years since his first election victory. The youngest voters today were born after the first military coup that ousted his government; an even larger portion yet have basically no recollection of his premiership.

The Shinawatras’ role in politics is far from over, but the years of Pheu Thai electoral dominance is almost certainly at an end.

This week’s Thailand top three:

1. The Anutin government officially cancelled the maritime agreement with Cambodia, MOU 44

2. The cabinet is moving forward with an emergency decree to borrow 400 billion baht

3. Constitutional reform looks set to be stalled

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1. MOU 44 is officially revoked

The cabinet, on the recommendation of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow, moved to unilaterally revoke MOU 44 on May 5. Anutin informed Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Manet, of his decision at the ASEAN Summit in the Philippines. Without MOU 44, Thailand and Cambodia will fall back to UNCLOS mechanisms; Hun Manet has already pledged to move forward with compulsory conciliation, a move that Anutin welcomed. (This is a non-binding process led by a five-member commission). However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that while Thailand is aware of Cambodia’s desire to use this process, Bangkok has not necessarily agreed.

What’s MOU 44, again? This is a bilateral agreement between Thailand and Cambodia, signed in 2001 under the Thaksin Shinawatra government, where the two governments established a framework to negotiate overlapping maritime boundary claims in the Gulf of Thailand. It also proposed a Joint Development Area to explore petroleum and natural gas reserves before a final boundary is agreed upon. Critics have argued that MOU 44 posed a risk to Thailand’s sovereignty over Koh Kood island. This is also the rationale behind which the government is choosing to pitch the necessity of cancelling MOU 44. Anutin posted on Facebook that “without MOU 44, there will no longer be a line drawn through Koh Kood to cause further doubt or concern. My fellow citizens can rest assured: #KohKoodBelongsToThailand.” Of course, MOU 44 dealt with more than just Koh Kood and it remains to be seen what the outcome of UNCLOS compulsory conciliation (if it happens) would be for the maritime borders.

2. Government seeks to borrow 400 billion baht

The Anutin cabinet also approved a draft emergency decree that authorizies the Ministry of Finance to borrow up to 400 billion baht. As the Public Relations Department summarized, the funds will be used “to ease impacts on people’s living costs caused by the energy crisis and to support the restructuring of Thailand’s energy sector to reduce vulnerability and strengthen energy security in the long run.” Of these funds, 200 billion baht will be used to alleviate the impact of rising costs for vulnerable groups, and another 200 billion baht will be used to facilitate the transition to renewable energy and reduce dependence on imported fuels.

Unsurprisingly, this borrowing scheme is controversial. Thailand’s public debt already stands at around 66 percent of GDP, leading to earlier reports that the government may seek to raise the debt ceiling (currently at 70 percent).1 The constitution, however, mandates that “the issuance of an Emergency Decree under paragraph one shall be made only when the Council of Ministers is of the opinion that it is an emergency of necessity and urgency which is unavoidable.”2 Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nititanpraphas argues that to avoid cascading crises stemming from raising energy prices, which could lead to stagflation, this borrowing is necessary. However, both the People’s Party and the Democrat Party raised questions about the necessity of this borrowing and how the funds will be used. Both parties say they plan to raise a challenge on the legality of this decree with the courts.

3. Constitutional reform stalled

Our final major update concerns something the cabinet didn’t do: the cabinet did not select the constitutional amendment bills still pending from the previous parliament to carry over to the current parliament. Minister attached to the Prime Minister’s office Paradon Prissanananthakul said that the last dissolution of parliament was caused by disagreement over the constitution reform process, and that meant it would be unlikely that the draft would fail to pass once again.

I believe I am correct in saying that the 2026 constitutional referendum led to the biggest popular mandate in Thai history, with over 21 million people voting to draft a new constitution. Yet drafting a new constitution was not included as a government priority in its policy declaration to parliament. For his part, Anutin has maintained that the referendum result was a “command” from the people that is “beyond just a policy” and must be obeyed. However, the People’s Party’s Parit Wacharasindhu said that the government “lacks sincerity” in following the referendum result, while the former election commissioner, Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, asked if this meant the constitutional reform process would be delayed by another two years.

In other news…

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was released on parole today, as we discussed last week.

The People’s Party officially launched their campaign for the Bangkok local elections, with Chaiwat Sathawornwichit as their candidate for governor.

The Democrats will launch their Bangkok election campaign on May 16. Their candidate is a male businessman with political experience aged between 50 to 60. It’s anyone’s guess who that is.

This year the race for governor has felt decidedly low-energy. The incumbent, Chadchart Sittipunt, won a massive election victory in 2022, receiving over fifty percent of the vote against a crowded field that included several qualified and well-known candidates. A NIDA poll last year revealed that around 78 percent of respondents were either very satisfied or quite satisfied with Chadchart’s performance as governor. As such, any candidate seeking to prevent Chadchart’s re-election are setting themselves up for a difficult task. The People’s Party candidate Chaiwat Sathawornwichit straightforwardly acknowledged Chadchart’s high approval ratings and said unseating him will not be easy. Meanwhile, the Democrats admitted that Chadchart’s strength was making it difficult for them to attract capable challengers to take him on.1

With the race only feeling slightly more lively than the Martian surface right now, I’ll cover the gubernatorial election in more detail when the energy hopefully picks up as campaigning starts in honest. Instead, the focus today will be on the Bangkok Metropolitan Council,2 the legislative body of Bangkok’s administration.

Pro-Chadchart groups emerge

Pheu Thai won the most seats on the BMC in 2022, with 20 out of 50 seats. It was thus a surprise when the party decided that it would not field any BMC candidates this year, although the party would allow members to run and use the party logo if they wish. Yet the decision by the former champions not to officially support any BMC candidates immediately set off a torrent of party-switching.

Khrungthep Thurakij has a list of all current Bangkok councillors here and their current electoral plans. It is evident that the Pheu Thai councillors are splitting in different directions. A number may decide to take up the party’s offer to use the Pheu Thai logo and continue running as Pheu Thai members. Others have switched to other parties. Several, however, appear to be planning to run with non-partisan groups supporting Chadchart. These non-partisan groups are not formal party organizations, so members would technically run as independents, with the understanding that they are a part of these looser confederations of councilors.

Chadchart, for his part, has said that he is not currently supporting any councilor candidates and will announce his support for certain groups in due course. (He did post a call for people to join his “Work Work Work” network, which seems likely to be the name of a future group of candidates to support him). In the vacuum, there is a proliferation of groups that are using Chadchart’s green branding and announcing that they intend to support Chadchart as governor. These include a group called “Khon Tum Ngarn” (working people), “Sor Kor Phan Mai” (new breed councilors), and Better Bangkok. Some of these groups appear to be more closely connected with the governor’s team than others.

Of particular interest is Better Bangkok. It was started by former Pheu Thai councilor Surachit “Dr. John” Phongsinghvithya. “Better Bangkok” was the slogan used by Chadchart during his last campaign, and the group’s candidates have been posting graphics showing themselves with the governor. They have also been using a similar CI style to what Chadchart has been using (see right picture below). However, Chadchart released a statement saying that he had no connection to the Better Bangkok group, prompting Dr. John to clarify that while he asked the governor for permission to use a similar branding system, his group was not officially affiliated with Chadchart but will simply seek to support him.

And amidst the chaos, we have at least one group that has already folded. A number of Bangkok Councillor candidates initially appeared ready to contest under the banner of a group called "Bangkok First", but the leader of the group, a ex-Pheu Thai councillor, has already switched his allegiance to the Democrats, bringing at least one ex-People’s Party councillor with him.

Quasi-independence over party labels

The decision by so many candidates to disavow partisan affiliations in favor of less formal groups reverses the triumph of party labels in recent BMC elections. In 2022, only three of the BMC seats had been won by independents affiliated with former governor Asawin Kwanmuang’s Rak Krung Thep group; in 2010 only one independent had won. This year, with Pheu Thai’s withdrawal, we may see a large number of BMC candidates from these looser groupings win. This is actually a reversal of the trend in the provinces towards increasing party prominence. But interestingly, these “independents” are not truly independent, belonging as they do to these looser groups that are attempting to align themselves with prominent candidates like Chadchart. Running with the popular governor may now seem like a far more attractive proposition than remaining with a weakened Pheu Thai

One question worth pondering is: does the People’s Party complete sweep hold any clues for how Bangkok will vote in the BMC elections? Here, past may not be prologue. In 2022, Move Forward won only 14 out of 50 districts before (almost) sweeping the capital in the 2023 election. Long-serving councillors with a strong local record have often been more impervious to the national sentiment than MPs. I would expect all the major parties and groups fielding incumbents to win a number of seats, preventing a PP landslide.

In 2022, the Democrat candidate for governor, Suchatvee Suwansawat, sometimes made the argument that a governor cannot go it alone. His party was also fielding candidates for the Bangkok Metropolitan Council, and voters should consider choosing a governor and a councilor from the same party so that they would be able to work together effectively. Chadchart’s response was that previous independent governors had successfully run Bangkok without their own team in the BMC. If Chadchart does end up endorsing his own team of independents, it likely points to some truth to what Suchatvee said; the governor was likely frustrated without close allies on the BMC. Ironically, then, an independent governor may now want a less independent team of independents to help further his agenda.

I still can’t promise that this will be a regular feature — and to be upfront, if I do turn on paid subscriptions to this newsletter I may make some of these news roundups subscriber-only. But for now, they are completely free, and I hope you enjoy them!

This week’s Thailand Top Three:

• The Anutin government revives proposals for a land bridge in Southern Thailand

• Thaksin Shinawatra approved for early parole

• Agricultural minister Suriya Juangroongrueangkit finds himself in hot water over a bureaucratic transfer

1. A land bridge to nowhere?

The crisis in the Hormuz strait has led to a revival of plans around a “land bridge” in Southern Thailand. Instead of summarizing everything to do with this on-again, off-again mega-project vision here, recommend Aidan Jones’ article in the South China Morning Post here on the land bridge scheme. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul pitched the land bridge vision to visiting Singaporean Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing; the Thai readout stated that “Singapore expressed interest in Thailand’s Land Bridge project, viewing it as a means of transport connection between the two coasts to reduce risks and enhance logistics capacity.”

Predictably, the revival of the land bridge has been controversial. The People’s Party has called for a re-evaluation of the land bridge. The Democrats said that Bhumjaithai did not include a land bridge in their policy proposals during the election campaign, and that shipping companies have privately told the party they would not be interested in using it. There has also been some friendly fire: Industry Minister Varawut Silpa-archa said there must be a thorough environmental assessment, leading Deputy Prime Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakan to joke that Varawut was setting out a position based on his role as the former environment minister and “may be forgetting that he is currently industry minister.”

Given the high price tag of pursuing such a scheme, expect the land bridge to continue dominating policy debates if the Anutin government is serious about pursuing it. But for the land bridge enthusiasts out there, I wouldn’t get too excited yet: a land bridge has been under discussion since the Prayut Chan-o-cha government, and so far the scheme has gotten nowhere.

2. Thaksin to go home

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was returned to prison in September year after the Supreme Court ruled that his stay at the Police-General Hospital between 2023 and 2024 was unwarranted. Since then, we have heard very little from him, aside from what his family has reported after their regular visits to see him in prison. (He reportedly sang a version of “Let It Be” after hearing about the election results in February). Now, Thaksin is coming out: he was granted early parole owing to his age and health.

We still don’t know how public a political role Thaksin will play on his return. Pheu Thai leader Julapun Amornvivat said that Thaksin is unlikely to take up an official advisory position, but remains the “spirit” of the party. Yes, Thaksin could finally make good on his pledge to focus on taking care of his grandchildren. But it’s difficult to imagine Thaksin divorcing himself entirely from politics.

3. Controversial bureaucratic transfer

Agricultural Minister Suriya Juangroongrueangkit has found himself shrouded in controversy this week. Rachen Sillaparaya, the director-general of the Royal Rainmaking Department1, resigned from the bureaucracy after he was transferred to another position in the ministry. Rachen was due to retire in only five months.

Rachen stated in his resignation letter that he was “unable to meet the demands” of the political appointees. Suriya first clarified that he had transferred Rachen because he wanted someone younger in post, “not an old person nearing retirement.” Rachen then alleged that Suriya’s nephew, who runs an airline, had tried to contact him (but that he had not taken the meeting). This prompted Suriya to respond that he had been unaware of his nephew’s attempt to contact Rachen. The drama took another turn when Rachen was also forced to respond to rumors that he was planning to field his daughter as an MP candidate in Sakhon Nakhon; Rachen dismissed these rumors by noting that his daughters are only in primary school. His sister, however, ran as a Bhumjaithai candidate in the past.

While this might initially look like standard conflict between politicians and bureaucrats, this particular controversy could have important implications. Already, a petitioner has asked the Electoral Commission to investigate whether this transfer qualifies as an ethical violation; if the case is taken up, this could potentially lead to Suriya’s removal. Pheu Thai would much prefer for publicity to be concentrated on Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Higher Education Yodchanan Wongsawat, who is currently the face of the party; the transfer controversy provides the party with unwelcome headlines instead.

In other news…

The People’s Party launched a quasi-shadow cabinet. (I say quasi because there is no shadow minister assigned to each cabinet minister).

Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Supajee Suthumpun has found herself in a prickly situation due to her decision to team up with a famous livestreamer to sell durian for 100 baht per kilogram.

Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt sent the strongest signals yet that he’s running for a second term. The People’s Party is likely to field deputy leader Chaiwat Sathawornwichit, while the Democrats say they have a candidate but cannot yet reveal who it is. The Economic Party says their candidate, whose name starts with a “J” (จ), has wide name recognition.

In 2023, the Move Forward Party campaigned on the slogan “choose Move Forward and Thailand will not be the same.” This time around, Bhumjaithai could very well have run on the slogan “Vote for Bhumjaithai and every party will remain the same.”

The People’s Party had originally been anticipated to announce a major leadership change, in the event that party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut was suspended from parliament due to an ethics case against him and 43 other former Move Forward MPs. Indeed, Natthaphong had previously announced that he would step down if a suspension was handed down. Previous reports stated that Natthaphong would be replaced by deputy leader Veerayooth Kanchoochat, while Natthaphong would take on the position of secretary-general. But while the Supreme Court accepted the legal petition, it did not order a suspension of the MPs, which means Natthaphong can still perform his duties and become leader of the opposition. Accordingly, the PP did not replace Natthaphong with Veerayooth as originally anticipated, instead only appointing Picharn Chaowapatanawong as secretary-general.1

It is a little surprising, however, that the PP did not make any sweeping changes to its leadership lineup. The party’s performance in the February 2026 election had fallen short of expectations, and Natthaphong had generally polled behind his party in the NIDA surveys. Indeed, the man who the party had billed as “the programmer who will write Thailand’s future” has always seemed an unorthodox pick for party leader. But one wonders whether or not the PP is still in a “wait and see” position, unwilling to reveal new moves until there is greater clarity on the legal situation.

Pheu Thai also announced a new executive committee lineup, but there were few changes at the very top. Julapun Amornvivat will remain as party leader and Prasert Jantararuangtong as secretary-general. The party did announce the formation of a new advisory committee, which includes many heavyweights into the Thaksinverse, including former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the prime minister candidate (and currently deputy prime minister) Yodchanan Wongsawat. The board also includes Pheu Thai stalwarts like Suriya Juangroongrueangkit and Phumtham Wechayachai.

For a party that just suffered its worst election result in its history, these changes appear limited in scope and unlikely to alter its trajectory. But the party may also have decided that it has little choice right now but to continue on the path of being a strong mid-sized party. A piece in Khrungthep Thurakij recently stated that Pheu Thai is unlikely to field any candidates in the upcoming Bangkok Metropolitan Council elections, a clear sign that the party is scaling back its ambitions. “When it is no longer a krasae party, and it is not a baan yai party, the ‘red camp generals’ must revise their strategy, scaling down from a large party to a medium-sized party,” the piece wrote. Perhaps the Pheu Thai leadership lineup also does not really matter: all eyes are on Yodchanan as the future of the party, and there is no tradition in Pheu Thai that its most prominent member must be its official leader.

And so for different reasons, two major parties have decided to keep their leadership structures largely intact despite disappointing election performances. A smaller party that made no changes was the Democrat Party. This included making no replacement to Weeraphong Prapha, a deputy leader who had just been poached by the government to become Thailand Trade Representative.

One party did make a significant change: Kla Tham swapped out Narumon Pinyosinwat as leader for Thammanat Promphao. It was a move to formalize the party’s informal power structure, given that Thammanat had already said that he is the party’s “owner.” Thammanat had outperformed expectations in the previous election; as he said at the party meeting, despite undergoing constant attacks, Kla Tham was able to win 56 seats. As he memorably put it: “we did not just topple elephants, but something bigger than an elephant. Whales. If it were my son, he would say krakens.” Thammanat also noted that there were 45 Kla Tham candidates whose losing margin was in hundreds of votes, meaning that the party could also had conceivably won over a hundred MPs if it had more time to campaign.

The challenge for Kla Tham, of course, is the fact that it is unexpectedly now in opposition. Thammanat noted himself that party members have been in government for too long and “are not used to being in opposition.” It remains to be seen whether or not the party can hold together, but the new executive lineup (which included the appointment of 12 deputy leaders) reveals that its members remain loyal. Chalermchai Sri-orn, the former Democrat Party leader who announced last year that he would assist Kla Tham with its election campaign.

Overall, this season of party annual conferences have not yielded big changes, despite a general election that considerably shifted Thailand’s political balance of power. The 2026 general election is over, but most Thai parties appear satisfied to retain their 2025 status quo.

We learned that the People’s Party MPs have for now been spared a parliamentary suspension, and Pheu Thai restructured its executive board. I plan to write about changes in the leadership of these parties in a future post, so I won’t be covering this today. Instead, we’ll be taking a look at discussions on the debt ceiling, the prime minister’s meeting with China’s foreign minister, a move towards cancelling MOU 44 and the distribution of parliamentary committee chairmanships.

Thailand mulls raising debt ceiling

On April 20, Deputy Prime Minister Prakorn Nilprapunt revealed that the government is planning to borrow 500 billion baht. Thailand’s public debt is currently at around 66 percent of GDP, with the debt ceiling standing at 70 percent. When asked by reporters whether he was planning to raise the debt ceiling from 70 to 75 percent, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul nodded. Later, however, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanpraphas said that there was no need yet to raise the debt ceiling. He also said that a borrowing decree will only be made if there is need, noting that the government must prepare to deal with a long-term global crisis.

Ekniti has also revealed that a new phase of the Khon La Khrueng scheme is coming in June, with the ratio of government assistance and public payment likely to be adjusted from 50:50 to 60:40. It appears that the scheme will also be renamed to Thai Chuay Thai Plus (Thais Help Thais Plus).

Anutin meets Wang Yi

Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, met with Anutin at Government House on April 24. This is his first visit to Thailand since 2024, when Thailand and China officially signed a visa-exemption agreement. This visit did not yield as big of an announcement, but it appeared to be friendly, with Wang telling Anutin that he “looks very handsome” and Anutin replying that Wang is “more handsome than me.” Anutin also personally drove Wang to lunch in his BYD car.

More substantively, according to Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow, China said that it will not interfere in the issue of Thai-Cambodian relations. (Before visiting Bangkok, Wang Yi was previously in Cambodia, where he called for scam centers to be “completely eradicated”).

National Security Council moves to cancel MOU 44

On the topic of Cambodia: the National Security Council approved the cancellation of MOU 44, a bilateral agreement between Thailand and Cambodia governing the maritime border in the Gulf of Thailand. (I previously wrote about MOUs 43 and 44 here). This was a major Bhumjaithai campaign pledge, and many coalition partners had also pushed for the revocation of at least one of the MOUs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will now have to determine how to move forward. According to the Chief of Staff of the Royal Navy, Thailand and Cambodia can utilize UNCLOS mechanisms moving forward.

Committee chairmanships decided

Parliament has finished allocating chairmanships of parliamentary committees. The quotas were as follows: 14 for Bhumjaithai, 9 for the People’s Party, 5 for Pheu Thai, 4 for Kla Tham, 2 for the Democrat Party and 1 for Thai Ruam Phalang. Thairath English has a full list of the committees distributed here.

NationWeekend reported that there was quite a frenzy from the parties to seize these chairmanships, with many parties fighting over the same committees. The easiest allocations were Pheu Thai’s, which received committees corresponding to their ministries under their control, but Bhumjaithai and the People’s Party expressed interest in many of the same committees. “In the last parliament,” NationWeekend notes, “the orange party received the chairmanship of many committees and used these mechanisms to scrutinize the government until they were able to use this information in no confidence debates and National Anti-Corruption Commission petitions. This time, the coalition parties must seize the chairmanships that correspond with their administrative allocations.”

Split-ballot voting in Thailand

Thailand has a parallel electoral system, composed of a constituency system (where voters choose a local candidate) and a proportional “party-list” system (where voters pick the party they like best). In this system, ballot-splitting — when a voter picks one constituency candidate from one party and then selects another party on the party-list — is quite common. But ballot-splitting is a bit of a puzzling phenomenon.

A glance at the scholarly literature on vote behavior would actually tell us that ballot splitting should actually be quite unlikely to happen. This may perhaps sound silly to many who are enthusiastic about politics (of course Thais can, as the saying goes, choose a candidate they like and a party they love, both of which need not be of the same affiliation). But as scholars like Arthur Lupia (1994) have shown, voters who — quite rationally — do not want to spend all of their valuable time consuming political information depend on “heuristics” (shortcuts), such as endorsements, to make voting decisions. The existence of large-scale ballot splitting in Thailand would indicate that voters are, in fact, not depending on a single source of heuristics: they are using different rationales to make different decisions on the two ballots.

What are those rationales? To make sense of split ballot results, we have generally treated constituency results as reflective of local attitudes (“this MP has performed exemplary service in my locality and deserves to be re-elected”), while party-list results are seen as a proxy for genuine ideological attachments or national sentiments (“I agree with this party’s policy platform and want their candidate for prime minister”). This often leads to contradictory voting decisions, where a voter might pick the People’s Party on the party-list ballot but vote Bhumjaithai on the constituency ballot — even though they do not see eye to eye on many fundamental issues and would have been unlikely to form a government together. This was certainly the case in 2023, when Move Forward was the most popular option on the party-list in 70 constituencies won by the major conservative parties (United Thai Nation, Palang Pracharath, and Bhumjaithai).

In 2026, we still see a lot of split ballot voting decisions. The People’s Party won the most party-list votes in most of the central and northeast, but won only a handful of constituency seats. Pheu Thai was still dominant in the northeast party-list vote but saw major inroads made by Bhumjaithai and Kla Tha, in the constituency ballot. The Democrats swept the south on the party-list, but a plea by the party for voters to give the party more than “half their love” failed. The map of the constituency vs party list results below illustrates this clearly:

Straight ticket voting in the 2026 general election

At the same time, the 2026 general election complicates our understanding of the party-list ballot with an increased number of straight-ballot results. Some were to be expected: many more provinces that previously voted for Bhumjaithai on the constituency ballot now also returned more votes for the party in the party-list than ever. This aligns with our theoretical expectations: the party became genuinely more popular nationally and had emerged as an ideological choice for a large segment of voters. But there were other instances where parties with little national krasae1 were topping the vote in the proportional system as well.

Consider Phayao province. Phayao has long been the homebase of Kla Tham’s prime minister candidate, Thammanat Promphao. In 2023, when Thammanat was still a member of the Palang Pracharath Party, Phayao voted in PPRP MPs in all of its three constituencies, while on the party-list two constituencies favored Pheu Thai and one constituency voted for Move Forward. As we noted earlier, this was a typical result in 2023, and an analyst extrapolating to 2026 would have predicted that Kla Tham would now sweep the province on the constituency ballot but the party-list result would likely return either Pheu Thai or the People’s Party. These expectations would prove completely wrong. Kla Tham swept in both systems, winning all three constituencies and coming in first in the party-list by a wide margin. (Kla Tham won 121,746 votes on the party-list province-wide, while the PP came in a rather distant second place at 71,108 votes).

Phayao is not the only province where this happened. In Ubon Ratchatani, the Thai Ruam Palang Party came first in the party-list vote in a number of constituencies. Meanwhile, Palang Pracharath won the most party-list votes in the constituency seat of its leader, Trinuch Thienthong. Overall, where four parties came in first on the party-list vote in any constituency in 2023, eight parties accomplished this feat in 2026.

Something similar happened in 2011 when Chart Thai Pattana won the party-list vote in three out of five provinces in Suphanburi. The deep south has also favored Prachachart on the party-list two elections in a row. This means that straight-ticket voting for regional parties is not necessarily a new phenomenon. However, both Chart Thai Pattana and Prachachart are somewhat exceptional cases; the former has built a legendary base of support in Suphanburi over decades and even this loosened up in 2023, when Move Forward won the most party-list seats in the province. Meanwhile, Prachachart is popular in the deep south for identity-related reasons that go beyond just local patronage. So the fact that we have the local baan yai2 winning considerable numbers of party-list votes is a rather fascinating result.

What this means

Perhaps we shouldn’t make too much out of the fact that three provinces decided to vote a little differently on the party-list vote compared to the rest of the country. But it does force us to update some of our priors on how voters and parties approach the parallel voting system, which can be important to analyzing future elections.

For one, it was perhaps premature in 2023 to forecast that the baan yai were at risk of being displaced by nationally popular parties. Move Forward winning big on the party-list even in the strongholds of the baan yai was perhaps a sign of the party’s exceptional popularity in 2023 but not to the vulnerability of the local clans themselves: the moment that the progressive forces began declining in popularity, the baan yai were ready to mount a renewed challenge. Urban-local convergence remains a complicated story in Thailand.

Secondly, even locally-driven parties may care more about the party-list than we originally expected. It actually doesn’t make much sense for parties with strong local capacity to spend a lot of resources canvassing for the party-list vote; there are only a hundred party-list MPs, so you would need about one percent of the vote nationally to get even one MP. It’s much more efficient to spend resources on winning constituency seats if a party has the capability. Differing ballot numbers also means that it is quite confusing for parties to give two different numbers for voters to memorize. But perhaps some parties do want at least a modest number of party-list votes, because most party leaders run on the party-list rather than the constituency. Hence a party like Kla Tham may wish to make a big party-list push in its strongest province to make sure that its two core leaders, Thammanat and Narumon Pinyosinwat, would be able to enter parliament.

Third, we still need a better understanding of the circumstances in which a voter would go straight-ticket for a local party. Even though they are outliers, the existence of constituencies where Kla Tham, Palang Pracharath, and Thai Ruam Palang won the party-list vote demonstrates that the generally accepted hypothesis of “constituency races for local matters and party-list for national matters” does not always apply. Is this due to a deep enthusiasm for a local candidate that overrides national concerns? A genuine belief that these parties are also ideological matches? We can guess, but without more data we don’t know for sure.

Two parallel election systems is, to a political scientist with an enthusiasm for electoral politics, a bit like giving Charlie (of Chocolate Factory fame) two Wonka bars instead of one. We get to study basically two elections happening at once! But they do make things more complicated to study, and leave us with a lot more food for thought.

Struggling people everywhere wonder whether their politicians are being paid too much. For a small party, this is fertile ground with which to raise their profile. In a strategically astute move, the Thai Pakdee Party’s only MP, Dr Warong Dechgitvigrom, has chosen to make MP benefits his first rallying cry on his first return to parliament after an absence of 12 years.

In his very first speech to parliament, Warong made three attention-grabbing proposal:

• Ending the practice of providing free food to MPs. (They were receiving an allowance of 1,000 baht a day for food, a budget totaling 72 million baht a year).

• Reducing the number of assistants each MP is entitled to from eight to three.

• Reconsidering the MPs’ pension system.

So far, Warong’s proposal on cutting free food has gotten the most traction. This proposal is not completely new; MPs from both Future Forward and Pheu Thai have suggested reducing this budget in the past. Warong managed to cut through the noise, however, and a wave of popular agreement on social media seems to have pushed MPs from various larger parties to also express their consent on cutting this benefit. Some minority noises, who argued that this is a reasonable benefit, were largely outweighed by those who said that an MP receiving a salary over a hundred thousand baht per month should be able to pay for their own meals.

More controversial are the other two proposals. The eight assistants that MP have are split into two three categories. There is one “personal expert” (ผู้เชี่ยวชาญประจำตัว) who is tasked with providing expert advice to the MP; they receive a salary of 24,000 baht per month. There are also two “personal specialists” (ผู้ชำนาญการประจำตัว) who help the MP with research and gathering data for use in parliamentary speeches. They receive a 15,000 baht salary. Finally, the MP is entitled to five additional assistants who assist with work outside of an MP’s official responsibilities, such as visiting their constituencies and resolving local issues. They also receive a 15,000 baht salary. In October, these salaries will be increased (the personal expert will receive 28,800 baht and the others will receive 18,000 baht).

While these salaries are not at all high, the required budget to pay for eight assistants for 500 MPs do add up. So do MPs need eight assistants? One MP told me that he makes effective use of all eight. Constituency MPs in particular probably do need a number of staff members to help with responding to local concerns. But whether all MPs need eight assistants is probably up for legitimate debate. In the UK, MPs receive a set budget that they can use to hire as few or as many staff members as they see fit; they typically employ around five, although staff there say they are overstretched. Warong himself has said that he will hire only three — but critics would probably counter that he is a party-list MP with no responsibility to any particular constituency. Expect much more discussion about this in the future, along with more pushback from other MPs than in the free food debate.

The final proposal on MPs’ pensions is perhaps the most popular with the public. The pension scheme began in 2014 and, as the Bangkok Post summarizes it, has MPs paying 3,500 baht per month to the provident fund; MPs who serve at least one year then receive monthly payments starting at a minimum of 21,300 baht (and more depending on how long the MP spent in parliament). The ex-MPs also receive additional health and child educational benefits. The Economic Party under Chris Potrananda has joined Warong’s crusade against this system, pledging not to take their pensions.

At a time of increasing economic challenges, it is unsurprising that MPs’ benefits that have gone under radar in the past now face increasing scrutiny. In Thai, the word for populism (prachaniyom) typically refers to giveaways for the people, but the global definition of populism usually refers to the taking up of the mantle of the common people in opposition to an elite group. The mood in Thailand is receptive to this second form of populism, and one wonders whether it will emerge as increasingly electorally salient.

As for Dr Warong: it’s still very early in the parliamentary term, but thus far he has broken out as someone who has punched way above his own small party’s weight.

Sometimes writing on the formation of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s second cabinet is it all feels a bit like déjà vu. Anutin made his new declaration of policy to parliament today — his last one was in October, just six months ago! Here we are again to analyze this latest statement. The full policy declaration is available in English here.

Anutin’s second policy declaration does differ markedly from the first, of course. Back in October, he had focused on laying out plans for a short-term premiership. Anutin alluded to his first term in this policy declaration, explaining that his government had “assumed the administration of state affairs under circumstances in which Thailand is surrounded by uncertainty on matters of the economy, society, politics, international relations and global geopolitics.” The previous government delivered “Quick Big Wins” through policies like the Khon La Khrueng scheme and resolving the Cambodian border conflict.

Anutin noted that the government had been able to increase economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2025, but Thailand is now facing renewed challenges due to the conflict in the Middle East. He thus declared that the government will be managing public resources with fiscal discipline “in order to increase flexibility in managing potential emergencies in the future to come.” Unlike in October, Anutin’s new statement also nods to his long-term vision for the country. He said that Thailand still faces several growth-reducing pressures. To this end, his government will seek to “flexibly adapt to new global rules and shifting power dynamics amidst ongoing uncertainty, while driving inclusive, high-quality growth to its maximum potential.”

Bhumjaithai is promising to follow through on many election pledges. It promises to continue the wildly popular Khon La Khrueng Plus scheme. On the security side, it also pledges to develop a 100,000-strong volunteer military program where Thai men can enlist on a four-year basis with “clear remuneration and performance evaluation systems.” And the government promises to expedite studying how to terminate MoU 44, the agreement between Thailand and Cambodia governing overlapping maritime claims and exploration of natural resources in the Gulf of Thailand. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like Pheu Thai’s flagship policies made the cut. There is no mention of the one million baht giveaway or a debt moratorium, for example — two major policies that Pheu Thai had run on during the election. This probably owes to the fact that none of the “economic ministries” (save the Ministry of Agriculture) were assigned to the party.

One thing that is new to this policy declaration is the inclusion of an “Integrated Strategic Cluster System” to manage state affairs. The five clusters are: 1. Macroeconomics, Investment and Future Industries, 2. Production, Trade and Services, 3. Infrastructure, Natural Resources and Environment, 4. Social and Welfare, and 5. Foreign Affairs and Security. Deputy government spokesperson Ratchada Dhnadirek said that the government will use these clusters to “[bring] together the private sector and the public, while repositioning the state as a supporter and facilitator for the people.” It’s probably too early to tell whether or not this is just a rebrand of pre-existing approaches or a genuine rethink of how to approach the achievement of long-term strategic goals in Thailand.

While Anutin acknowledged the holding of a referendum on amending the constitution (through which the public granted assent), there was no discussion of constitutional reform as a priority for the government. It’s probably safe to say that Bhumjaithai will not be moving forward aggressively on constitutional issues. Unless the opposition can unite on this issue (unlikely) and seek the support of some coalition partners (even more unlikely), no one will be able to force Anutin to follow through on the referendum result.

The opposition’s response

People’s Party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut adopted the government’s five-cluster terminology to argue that this government is actually dominated by five clusters of powerful groups. (See here for the five clusters). He also said that the biggest challenge facing the country is not an external crisis but crises within; one example is the clean air crisis, which a trusted government would be dealing with by passing the Clean Air Act.

Kla Tham MP Atthakorn Sirilatthayakorn (who seems to be emerging as the party’s main spokesperson in parliament) acknowledged that the prime minister has “bad luck” and is facing a crisis immediately after taking office. But he then pointed out a litany of questions he had about the government, ranging from what he alleges is the limited visibility of star minister Suphajee Suthumpun, the high costs attached to policies like the volunteer military scheme, and the low likelihood of achieving the government’s goal of three percent GDP growth.

Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva called the policy statement one that is largely unobjectionable but “lacks concreteness, lacks clear time frames, and lacks indicators” for measuring success. He noted that some major election pledges made by Bhumjaithai were missing in this policy statement. He pointed out that some Bhumjaithai figures had talked about building a land bridge during the campaign, but this did not appear in the election policies submitted to the Electoral Commission nor in the policy statement, turning it into a “secretive policy.”

Given the large majority enjoyed by the Bhumjaithai-led coalition, the policy declaration is sure to pass. After that, the new government will be able to get to work. Bhumjaithai’s slogan was “we walk the talk.” Anutin has spoken; now his government will have to deliver.

Next week is the Songkran holiday. Happy Thai New Year to everyone, and we’ll be back afterwards!

In February, I had listed a couple of potential coalition configurations. We have ended up with a “purple coalition” comprising Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai, with Kla Tham excluded from the mix. But this is a more purely purple government than many analysts may have originally imagined; only Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai are represented in this cabinet, with all other coalition partners excluded.

Here’s a look at the makeup of Anutin’s second government.

By the numbers

• Of the 7 deputy PMs appointed, 5 were from Bhumjaithai, 1 from Pheu Thai, and 1 outsider.

• Bhumjaithai received 13 full ministerial roles and while Pheu Thai received 5.

• 7 Bhumjaithai members were appointed deputy ministers, while 3 Pheu Thai members were appointed.

• In total, of the 35 individuals who were appointed to this cabinet, 25 are from Bhumjaithai, 8 are from Pheu Thai, and 2 do not have partisan affiliations.

In parliament, Bhumjaithai’s MPs make up around 65 percent of the coalition, while Pheu Thai makes up around 25 percent — so Pheu Thai has received roughly a fair allocation, while Bhumjaithai is slightly overrepresented. There is room for this because the remaining 10 percent of MPs are from small parties which did not win enough seats to warrant a place in the cabinet.1

A reflection of Bhumjaithai’s internal dynamics

This cabinet reflects the internal pressures of Bhumjaithai’s party management.

Anutin kept his promise to reappoint his three popular technocrats (Supajee Suthumpun, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, and Ekniti Nitithanpraphas) to their current roles, and top it up with deputy PM positions. This is unsurprising given how central they have been to the Bhumjaithai election campaign, but must still have been difficult because of the large number of factions within the party that were demanding positions.

Bhumjaithai clearly tried to balance rewarding longtime party loyalists and the thanking the large numbers of defecting factions who had been so critical to the party’s election victory. Prominent switchers like Varawut Silpa-archa (formerly head of the Chart Thai Pattana party) and Akanat Promphan (previously secretary-general of the United Thai Nation Party) both received cabinet roles. Some newcomers received their first-ever positions, such as Sanphet Bunyamanee, son of former senior Democrat Niphon Bunyamanee.

Inevitably, some defectors were disappointed — we saw Anucha Sasomsap hint to the press that his Nakhon Pathom faction contained four MPs and that it would be up to Anutin to consider whether he should be upgraded to a ministerial role. (In the end, he did not receive a cabinet position). Some of the original batch of defectors who had helped make the first Anutin government possible also did not receive appointments, including ex-industry minister Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana and ex-deputy interior minister Sakda Vicheansil (who actually lost his own constituency seat in a shock result).

We also see the increasing prominence of what has been dubbed the “Lookthep Gang”2 . This is a faction of heirs to prominent local clans who are seen as close to Bhumjaithai’s secretary-general, Chaichanok Chidchob (son of Newin Chidchob). The origins of this grouping can be tracked back to 2024, when Bhumjaithai decided to refresh the party image by bringing in younger politicians. Several received appointments in this cabinet, but some of the older generation in Bhumjaithai are reportedly dissatisfied with this grouping’s rise in influence. In addition to the large number of cabinet seats offered to the technocrats, this is another potential flashpoint for Bhumjaithai when reshuffles are placed on the horizon.

Other noteworthy points

Pheu Thai’s division of cabinet roles was interesting. It is no surprise that Prof. Yodchanan Wongsawat, the party’s main candidate in the past election, became deputy prime minister. It is, I believe, the first time in history that this role will be held concurrently with the higher education portfolio, a reflection of Yodchanan’s academic background. Suriya Juangroongrueangkit, who will now be holding a cabinet role under his sixth prime minister (stretching back to Chuan Leekpai in the 1990s!), must be breaking some sort of record. Notably absent is Somsak Thepsuthin, who rivals Suriya in ministerial experience but seems to have been dropped in a bid to let some newer faces into cabinet.

Gen. Natthaphon Narkphanit, defense minister in the first Anutin cabinet, is out. The new defense minister is Lt Gen Adul Boonthamcharoen, who was previously deputy defense minister. I’ve classified him as a nonpartisan appointment because he is not technically a member of any party. The former commander of the second army region, he has military experience in the lower northeast, including along the Cambodian border.

It is noteworthy that Dr. Bowornsak Uwanno, who was deputy prime minister responsible for legal affairs, has departed from the cabinet. We heard conflicting reports about why this was the case, but the most likely explanation appears to be due to his independent streak. We do know that he is an original thinker with his own ideas, seen most clearly during his time as constitution drafting committee where his vision reportedly diverged from the military government’s. Anutin instead decided to appoint Pakorn Nilprapunt, secretary-general of the Council of State. Pakorn comes with legal experience, and indeed he was recommended for his previous Council of State role by the most prominent legal mind of recent Thai governments, Wissanu Kruea-ngarm.

The new cabinet will not be able to begin conducting its duties until Anutin has made his policy declaration to parliament. In the meantime, the interim government will continue in office.

Over the course of his political career, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has been dealt some bad hands. In 2019, Anutin became health minister. Less than a year later, he was confronted with the worst pandemic in a century. Now, fresh off a massive electoral victory, before he even officially begins his second term as prime minister, he must oversee Thailand’s response to the worst energy crisis in recent memory.

After the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the Thai government sought to limit the impact of rising energy costs on consumers by significantly subsidizing fuel prices through the Oil Fuel Fund. Within three weeks, it had burned through 20 billion baht, with daily expenditure now reaching around 2 billion baht a day. The government began signaling that the dam on oil prices was about to break earlier in the week, when both Anutin and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanpraphas said that oil prices will soon have to reflect the market reality. “Resisting market forces by freezing prices is ineffective. We must tell the truth to the people. Everyone must adapt to the volatility of global markets.” The biggest single-day increase so far came on March 26th, when fuel prices went up by six baht a liter across the board.

The initial subsidies may have been a satisfactory band-aid if the situation in the Middle East had reached a quick resolution. As the crisis dragged on, however, the impact the subsidies had on the market began to backfire. As the economist Nattavudh Powdthavee wrote, in addition to being fiscally unsustainable, the price caps distorted the market in significant ways, leading to hoarding and lack of energy saving. Even as the government stated that Thailand had sufficient fuel reserves, the past few weeks have witnessed frequent shortages at gas stations, forcing the government to require frequent checks of fuel levels.

The energy crisis is, of course, not Anutin’s doing, and any government’s ability to resist the increase in gas prices is limited. Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, Thailand’s fuel prices remain relatively low. Unfortunately for the government, voters don’t operate on a comparative basis. And as we have seen from how incumbents suffered around the world in the wake of inflationary pressure caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, voters tend not to discern whether or not their government is truly to blame for their hardship. As the New York Times quoted one Thai fisherman saying, “It’s a crisis abroad. But we are the ones who get screwed.”

The optics problem may have been exacerbated due to personnel choices. The activist Srisuwan Janya recently petitioned for Anutin to remove Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn from his position on the task force responding to the energy crisis. Srisuwan argued that because Phiphat’s family members continue to be involved in the energy industry, his appointment violates the constitution. For his part, as the Bangkok Post wrote, Phiphat denies that there is any conflict of interest, “saying he left all management positions in his family's fuel retail business more than two decades ago…He said his appointment reflected his industry experience.”

The People’s Party has demanded that the government raise prices in phases (rather than the 6-baht hike we saw). Deputy leader Veerayooth Kanchoochat also called for differentiated levels of support for different segments of the population. The Democrat Party proposed cutting the diesel excise tax from 6.90 baht to 6 baht per liter and impose a windfall tax on oil refineries, with the proceeds to go to supporting the Oil Fuel Fund. The government has proved receptive to some of these proposals. On March 26th, after a special cabinet meeting, the government announced that it would be looking at reducing the fuel excise tax and increasing payments to state welfare card holders by 100 baht for one month, in order to support low income earners.

There was, however, discontent among opposition parties when no cabinet minister responded to MPs who debated responses to the energy crisis on March 25th in parliament, with Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva reminding the government that the interim cabinet is still constitutionally mandated to be held accountable by parliament. (Anutin was present during the debate but did not speak). The closest we came to a government response was when Bhumjaithai MP Akanat Promphan called on the new energy minister to have courage and to listen more from the people than from government data. The ministry, he said, must not greng jai (fear inconveniencing) anyone. The speech is notable because Akanat, according to various reports, is actually currently tipped to be the next energy minister!

If Akanat does receive this appointment, it will be worth watching how he approaches the energy crisis. When he was industry minister under the Pheu Thai government, Akanat was known for his aggressive approach to cracking down on illegal factories (to the point where he later claimed that gray businesses had put a 300-million baht bounty on his removal). Will he implement a similar take-no-prisoners approach to the energy industry? That remains to be seen.

Even as the world moves on to watching the geopolitical situation, I do want to take time to fully analyze the implications of the 2026 general election. So here is the second post in my series of election retrospectives, after my analysis of the results in Bangkok.

Last month, Joel Selway on Thai Data Points discussed the question of whether Bhumjaithai’s victory had been driven by nationalism. I encourage you to read the full piece, but the gist of his argument is that while nationalism likely played a role in motivating voters already predisposed towards Bhumjaithai, coordination in local races was the more important determinant of victory.

One thing that’s worth wondering about, however, is whether the Cambodian conflict played into voters’ calculations differently depending on where they were located. In what I will call the “regionalized nationalism” hypothesis, voters in areas that were directly affected by the conflict, or close enough to have gotten a scare from evacuation orders, would theoretically be more receptive to political pitches centered around national security.

One way to examine whether this hypothesis is accurate would be to see whether more nationalist parties performed better in provinces close to Cambodia. Two of the most stridently nationalist parties in this election were Bhumjaithai and the Economic Party. Below are maps of Thailand colored by party vote share, courtesy of Napon Jatusripitak’s election dashboard. (One note of caution: these maps are based on incomplete data at 94 percent reporting, but for our purposes here this shouldn’t significantly change the overall picture). Evacuations occurred in Buriram, Chanthaburi, Sa Kaeo, Si Sa Ket, Surin, Trat and Ubon Ratchathani.

The nationalist credentials of these two parties were very clear during the campaign. The Bhumjaithai government presided over the second round of the conflict between December 8-27 in late 2025. During the election campaign, the party pledged to build a border fence and to scrap MOU 44.

The Economic Party is, in some ways, the more interesting case study. It is a new party1 and lacks strong local networks. It was instead relying essentially solely on the nationalist wave. The party endorsed a border fence and scrapping MOU 44 and took even stronger stances on Cambodia than Bhumjaithai. Its leader, General Rangsi Kittiyanasap, made a name for himself with his straight-talking TV appearances where he proposed hardline measures on Cambodia. At one point, Rangsi said that “if Cambodia shoots at us, we must fire back with one hundred times the intensity” and appeared to suggest that Thailand can bring Hun Sen over to face justice (à la Maduro). The party also used the slogan “Thailand First” during the campaign. Thus, it’s reasonable to infer that people voting for the Economic Party did so mainly because of its policy program, not because of individual local candidates.

Bhumjaithai’s performance

Firstly, it’s worth noting that the lower northeast (which sits closest to Cambodia) voted differently on the party-list in 2026 than in 2023. Move Forward and Pheu Thai were the two parties that topped the party list vote in every constituency in this region in 2023. In 2026, Bhumjaithai had the most party-list votes in the lion’s share of constituencies. But Bhumjaithai also bested the other two parties in the Central region, where they also developed a high degree of local strength. It’s thus impossible to say for sure that the lower northeast performance was a regionalized result of nationalism.

To get a more granular picture, we’ll zoom into the border regions closest to Cambodia. Bhumjaithai saw its best performance on the party list ballot in one border province: Buriram. (See first map: the darkest shades of blue are concentrated in Buriram). Throughout the province, it won over 50 percent of the vote in every constituency, indeed in some areas winning close to 65 percent of the vote. But this is where Bhumjaithai has historically been strongest (Buriram is essentially the party’s capital city), and so its stratospheric performance here is unsurprising. Interestingly, the party failed to replicate this level of support outside of Buriram. Cross over to the border constituencies in Surin, Chanthaburi, and Sri Saket, and Bhumjaithai’s vote share decreases to closer to 30-40 percent of the vote. In Sa Kaeo, another province bordering Buriram, the party’s vote share declines to around 10 to 20 percent. In the Ubon Ratchathani constituencies directly bordering Cambodia, Bhumjaithai won as little as 6-8 percent of the vote.

This is still much higher than in 2023, of course, and given that nationally Bhumjaithai won 18 percent of the party-list vote, it can be said that in some border provinces Bhumjaithai did over-perform. Such results are perhaps attributable to nationalism. In Si Saket’s District 5, which sits on the border, Pheu Thai’s vote share collapsed from around 45 percent in 2023 to just 25 percent in 2026. That is a rather precipitous fall. Was this because voters were blaming Pheu Thai for mismanaging the border issues, and voters transferring their allegiance to Bhumjaithai? We would need survey data to draw a firm conclusion, but it would be a reasonable guess that at least some voters were behaving according to this logic.

We do have one point of caution to suggest that Cambodia was only one of many drivers of the Bhumjaithai vote in the border areas, however: the vote share varied considerably depending on which party possessed local strength. In some constituencies where Bhumjaithai faced dominant competitors, it underperformed. In Sa Kaeo’s district 2, for example, Bhumjaithai won just around 10 percent of the vote, while Palang Pracharath (which had a miserable election night otherwise) won around 27 percent. This is the district of PPRP leader Trinuch Thienthong, and this was the party’s strongest constituency nationwide. Here, local dynamics seem to have been key.

The Economic Party’s performance

What is more interesting is the Economic Party’s performance. Nationally, the party won around 3 percent of the party-list vote share (roughly a little over a million votes). But it was in the border areas that the Economic Party saw its strongest results. In the map, you can see that the darkest shades of yellow is clustered around the Cambodian border! Here were some of the party’s best constituencies:

• In Surin’s eighth district, the party won around 10 percent of the party-list vote; it had a similar performance in Sa Kaeo’s third district where they won a little over 9 percent. Both of these constituencies directly border Cambodia.

• In Sa Kaeo’s border constituencies (including Trinuch’s) it won 7 to 9 percent of the vote.

• In Chanthaburi’s third district and Si Saket’s fourth district, it won 8 percent of the vote.

It’s worth noting that we do not see similar performances anywhere else in the country. If the nationalist wave had swept through all of Thailand, you would expect to see the Economic Party to do respectably in Bangkok, the province most attuned to the national sentiment. But there, the Economic Party usually won between 1-3 percent of the party-list vote (in line with its national performance). The nationalist effect thus appears to be highly regionalized.

So what conclusions can we draw? There are too many confounding factors to say with complete certainty that Bhumjaithai performed well in the lower northeast because of the Cambodia factor. However, the strength of its performance on the party-list ballot, where voters are directly choosing a party instead of a local candidate, makes it plausible that Bhumjaithai may have indeed peeled off some nationalist voters from other parties. At least some Pheu Thai and People’s Party voters probably drifted towards Bhumjaithai because of the nationalism factor. Additionally, as Joel Selway wrote, nationalism likely played a role in turning out conservative voters who already were attuned to Bhumjaithai’s offerings in this election. In addition, the over-performance of the Economic Party in border areas indicates that the Cambodian conflict did play a role in driving the calculations of at least one major segment of the population in these provinces.

Yet if I were a party leader thinking of using nationalism as the main factor to drive support for my party, these results would give me pause. There were many facilitating causes underpinning Bhumjaithai’s victory, and nationalism was only one of them. The party that was riding solely on the nationalist wave was the Economic Party. The fact that their most outstanding performances show up clearest in constituencies that sit directly on the border and fade the further away you go indicate that even this regionalized version of nationalism may have had limited effects on voter behavior in the lower northeast. Indeed, even in some constituencies very close to the border, the Economic Party did not significantly over-perform.

The best conclusion we can draw based on the limited data we have is regionalized nationalism played at least some role in driving how voters behaved in 2026. That is not as clean a narrative as the one that the media offered in their reporting of the election results. Unfortunately, politics is rarely that clear-cut.

No surprises today: as expected, Anutin Charnvirakul was re-elected as prime minister in the House of Representatives.

Given that the result was a foregone conclusion, this vote is useful mainly as an exercise in evaluating the strength of the government coalition and the opposition. The coalition has 292 MPs1, while the opposition has 207 MPs. Anutin received 293 votes, while the People’s Party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut received 116 votes. 86 MPs abstained.

What explains the slight discrepancies? Six MPs from the Thai Ruam Palang Party, which is not in the coalition, decided to back Anutin. Of the two MPs in the Thai Sang Thai Party, which is in the coalition, one decided to abstain. There had been rumors that there were a number of PP MPs who were considering becoming “cobras”2 and supporting Anutin. In the end, one PP MP voted for Anutin, while the rest voted for Natthaphong. Anutin, Natthaphong, the speaker and the deputy speakers all abstained.

MPs had the opportunity to voice their thoughts on the two candidates in the lead-up to the vote. Pheu Thai leader Julapun Amornvivat’s speech in support of Anutin felt strangely lukewarm. He refused to discuss the candidates’ qualities, saying that he is not in a position to judge who is “good or bad.” He instead made an appeal based on parliamentary arithmetic, saying that Bhumjaithai had won significantly more MPs than the second and third largest parties. The PP MP Rangsiman Rome launched a mini-no confidence debate on Anutin, which was heavily protested by coalition MPs.

Fragmented opposition

While the PP was largely united behind Natthaphong, the rest of the opposition clearly remains fragmented, something that had previously been indicated during the vote for speaker. Like in that vote, both Kla Tham and the Democrat Party abstained instead of voting for either the Bhumjaithai or PP candidate.

Kla Tham had previously played coy about what it would do regarding the PM vote. Captain Thammanat Promphao had affirmed his friendship with Anutin, saying that he would “never kill his boss or sell out his friends” but refused to say if he would vote for Anutin for prime minister, saying that he must separate the personal and the political. The party also indicated earlier in the week that it was considering nominating Thammanat to compete for the post. In the end, however, the party decided to abstain. In his speech to parliament, Kla Tham MP Atthakorn Sirilatthayakorn said, “Today [Anutin] has forgotten his friend named Captain Thammanat. I don’t mind, but I ask for one thing. Today he has almost two hundred votes. Don’t forget the problems of the people.”

The Democrat Party announced one day before the vote that it had scrutinized the profiles of both candidates and decided that abstaining was “necessary and important.” (This marks the fourth consecutive time that the Democrats have decided to abstain in a PM vote!) Abhisit Vejjajiva argued that both Anutin and Natthaphong were facing pending legal cases (collusion in the Senate selection process for the former and supporting amendment of lese-majeste for the latter) and that it must be clear a prime minister has no issues with their ethical conduct. He did note that an abstention was not a signal that the Democrats were waiting to enter government: “I have been in the opposition for almost the longest of anyone in parliament…[I will] truly, not just scrutinizing to generate content.” (The latter sounds like a swipe towards the PP).

It is worth noting that both parties’ MPs were completely united in abstaining, showing that there are yet no “cobras” from these two parties who are seeking to support the government.

Thai Pakdee’s sole MP, Warong Dechgitvigrom, became an internet sensation after he spoke (admittedly off-topic) proposed ending the provision of free food for MPs and reducing the number of MP assistants during the speaker’s vote. He abstained in this vote, saying Anutin needed to show he would be an anti-corruption leader and the stop the practice of free food in parliament. Seri Ruam Thai leader Sereepisuth Temeeyaves, on the other hand, voted for Natthaphong.

Anutin will now move to officially assemble his new cabinet. The latest reports suggest that the cabinet lineup is “99.5 percent” settled. He will want to move quickly to finalize his government, as the powers his interim cabinet possesses is limited, restricting its ability to deal with the increasingly serious energy shock. It will be a formidable first challenge for a second term.

At the new parliament’s first session on March 15, Bhumjaithai’s Sophon Saram was elected by MPs as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mallika Jirapunvanit from Bhumjaithai was elected as first deputy speaker, while Lertsak Pattanachaikul from Pheu Thai was elected as second deputy speaker.

There were no surprises from the voting tally. Sophon received 289 votes, while the People’s Party nominee Parit Wacharasindhu received 123 votes. The former aligns approximately with the number of MPs in the government coalition, while the PP’s tally matched with its own MPs. There should thus be no surprises in the vote for prime minister.

We did get a preview of how the opposition will function, however. Both the Democrats and Kla Tham announced prior to the vote that they would abstain. The total number of abstentions was 80, which matches with the number of Democrats and Kla Tham MPs added with the interim speaker. This is a clear indication that the two parties are unwilling to follow the PP’s lead and will be seeking to maintain their independence. It also shows that for now there are no MPs from these two parties seeking to signal their willingness to defect and join the coalition, instead obeying their party leadership.1

A former primary school teacher from Buriram province, Sophon is known to be close to Newin Chidchob. Sophon said that as speaker, he wants more laws to originate from the legislature rather than the executive branch. We’ll have to wait and see how he plans to accomplish this.

“Buriram’s Golden Age”

Sophon’s election reflects the overall dynamics of this parliament. He will be the second Bhumjaithai figure to be Speaker — Newin’s father Chai Chidchob served in the post between 2008 to 2011 — but his speakership will take place under radically different circumstances from Chai’s. In 2008, Bhumjaithai had been conceded the post as an important coalition ally. Sophon, on the other hand, is ascending to the top post in Thailand’s legislative branch as a sign of how dominant the party’s position is.

A recent article in The Momentum noted the rising prominence of Buriram province. It is the home base of Bhumjaithai; the party held a three-day retreat for its MPs in Buriram just last week. Sophon, the constituency MP for Buriram’s District 5, will preside over the House of Representatives.2 In the Senate, Buriram senator Mongkol Surasajja wielded enough support to be elected Senate President in 2024. He previously served as Buriram’s provincial governor. (Overall, 14 Buriram candidates were selected as senators in 2024, the most of any province, surpassing far more populous provinces like Bangkok). Thai Post perhaps put it clearly when they called this era the “a true golden age for Buriram.”

In a way, the outsized eminence of the dark blue capital demonstrates the level of hegemony the dark blue camp currently exercises over Thai politics. They enjoy not only a parliamentary majority, but also a friendly Senate that has wide control over appointments to key posts in the judiciary and the independent agencies. To put it simply, we have not seen such a concentration of power in any faction in Thai politics during a democratic period since at least the early 2000s.

This is the first of several retrospective deep dives into the results of the 2026 general election, where I plan to look into interesting aspects of how certain regions behaved and how some parties performed. We’ll start off with an analysis of the results the nation’s capital: Bangkok.

You may ask why it is worth dissecting the results in Bangkok at all, when the People’s Party (PP) swept every single constituency. I think it deserves some attention because 1) it is an anomalous result that contradicts how the PP faltered in the constituencies across the rest of the country, and 2) Bangkok will be holding local elections later this year, and we may glean some useful predictions from these results.

Bangkok as swing province

Bangkok is a notoriously fickle-minded province, with the results often swinging wildly from election to election. This is because baan yai find it difficult to operate in highly urbanized environments, and so Bangkok candidates are often highly dependent on the party’s national popularity. Even well-regarded incumbents are easily tossed aside once their party falls out of favor.

Take a look at how Bangkok has voted in the past general elections held this century:

• 2001: Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party swept 29 out of 37 Bangkok constituencies, with the Democrats winning the rest

• 2005: Thai Rak Thai won 32 out of 37 Bangkok constituencies

• 2007: The Democrat Party won 27 out of 36 Bangkok constituencies, with Pheu Thai winning the rest

• 2011: The Democrat Party won 23 out of 36 Bangkok constituencies, with Pheu Thai winning the rest

• 2019: Palang Pracharath won 12 out of 30 Bangkok constituencies, with Future Forward and Pheu Thai splitting the rest

• 2023: Move Forward won all but one of Bangkok’s 33 constituencies

• 2026: The People’s Party won all of Bangkok’s 33 constituencies

There are three observations worth highlighting. Firstly, Bangkok tends to vote in one direction (with exceptions in 2011 and 2019). Secondly, in the past 25 years, no political party has ever been able to sustain its popularity in Bangkok over more than two election cycles. A party can win the vast majority of the seats in one election and then be almost wiped out in the next. Third, winning all the seats in Bangkok is rare. You have to go all the way back to 1976, when the Democrats swept Bangkok, to find a precedent.

The PP still has no peer in Bangkok

The PP won an average of around 42,000 votes per constituency, followed by Bhumjaithai at around 14,000, Pheu Thai at around 12,000 and the Democrats at around 10,000 votes. (This excludes District 15, for which the Electoral Commission hasn’t uploaded final results at the time of writing). You could add up the tallies for the next three parties together and in some constituencies, that still wouldn’t be enough to beat the PP. Take, for example, District 8 in Bangkok. PT’s Surachart Thienthong had won a byelection as late as 2022 with a margin of almost ten thousand votes. In this election, you could add the BJT and Democrat tallies to PT’s and they still would be slightly behind the PP.

That will be enormously disappointing for the other political parties. PT had initially looked well-positioned to win back some seats in Bangkok’s outer ring, which the party had retained before 2023 even after the height of Thaksin’s popularity had receded in the capital. Yet, one PT candidate managed to sum up the party’s problems succinctly when he posted immediately after the election: “I’m out of energy. I can’t beat the krasae.” Even PT’s long-standing local candidates with a long track record of constituency service were unable to overcome the strength of the PP party brand in Bangkok.

The Democrats, former champions who have endured a Bangkok drought since 2011, will also be disappointed that they did not come closer to winning a seat, despite Abhisit Vejjajiva’s return to lead the party. Indeed, they were more often fourth than second. Before the election, some news agencies were reporting that the party was hopeful about ten constituencies in Bangkok, but even in these constituencies the results were nowhere near victory. Bhumjaithai is at its highest level of popularity in Bangkok ever — it won only around two percent of the Bangkok vote share in 2023 — but like the Democrats, this was not nearly enough for them to be competitive.

We saw some outstanding performances from certain parties in a number of constituencies, such as the son of United Thai Nation Party secretary general Chatchawal Khongudom coming third in District 7 (he has long been well-known in the area) but this goes to show that even longstanding local networks could not overcome the PP wave.

What this means

The PP’s Bangkok haul accounts for over a quarter of all the seats that the party has won in this general election. It is a double-edged sword: PP is now even more vulnerable to shifts in the national sentiment than previously. In dyeing Bangkok completely orange, it has also become the orange capital. The historical odds are already against it; as we noted earlier, in the past 25 years no party has swept Bangkok more than twice in a row. If the PP is unable to sustain its national popularity until the next general election, major losses in its Bangkok seats would be devastating to the party. “Luckily” for the PP, however, this will also be only the second time in the past 25 years where a party has swept Bangkok did not enter government. (The first time was 2023, when Move Forward failed to form a government). Its level of popularity in Bangkok may not prove difficult to sustain while it remains in opposition.

Of course, it’s far too early to consider what might happen in the next general election. Coming up far more quickly are the local elections. Governor Chatchart Sittipunt’s term will end later this year, and so Bangkok is due to hold an election both for Bangkok governor and for members of the Bangkok Metropolitan Council (BMC). Chatchart has yet to announce whether he will run for re-election.

Logic would typically dictate that the PP should be in a strong position to win both the governorship and sweep the BMC, given how stratospheric their general election performance was. But it’s worth remembering how deeply formidable Chatchart’s electoral performance was in 2022. He had won almost 53 percent of the vote; no other candidate received more than 10 percent of the vote. After four years, Chatchart is probably not as popular as he was in 2022, but he’d need to fall down a long way before anyone can come close to catching up. The field in 2026 is likely to be as fractured as in 2022, with the PP and the Democrats certain to field candidates, and a number of independents are also likely to jump in. (We don’t know if Bhumjaithai will contest this race). That would make a Chatchart victory even more probable, if he chooses to run.

Other parties may have more of a chance in the BMC elections; Pheu Thai had won the most seats in 2022, followed by Move Forward and the Democrats. Long-standing councillors have proved more impervious to national shifts than MPs, but we’ll see if the PP’s popularity bucks yet another trend.

One year into Anutin Charnvirakul’s stint as Minister of Public Health, the COVID pandemic erupted and he was suddenly in charge of overseeing Thailand’s response to the biggest global health crisis in a century. Now, only a few weeks after he won a general election that will return him for a second term as prime minister, Anutin will now be in the unenviable position of overseeing Thailand’s response to a geopolitical crisis that have sent energy prices skyrocketing.

“The Iran war puts Asia in an energy panic,” blares The Economist’s headlines. “In 2025 Asia absorbed 87% of the crude and 86% of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) transiting via the Strait of Hormuz. Now the strait is blocked and Asia risks running out of fuel, fast.” As oil prices surge past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, Thailand is unfortunately one of those Asian economies that may find itself under significant pressure. 60 percent of Thailand’s crude oil and 25 percent of LNG are imported from the Middle East via the now-blockaded Strait of Hormuz. Multiple research agencies have noted that Thailand is one of Asia’s most vulnerable countries in the event of an energy crisis.

In his initial response to this unfolding energy shock, Prime Minister Anutin suspended fuel exports (except for petroleum to Laos and Myanmar)1. The government also acted quickly to assure consumers that energy prices will remain stable. On March 9th, Energy Minister Auttapol Rerkpiboon said that the Oil Fuel Fund was currently spending about 700 million baht a day to subsidize energy prices, and that this level of support can be maintained for at least another fifteen days.2 According to Auttapol, Thailand has enough supply of oil for 65 days “if imports were completely disrupted,” while “additional supplies secured from sources outside the Middle East would provide roughly another 30 days of coverage, bringing the total reserve estimate to about 95 days.” To help reach this goal, Anutin has also signed a directive requiring oil traders to increase their legal reserves from 1% to 3% of their annual trade volume.

Yesterday, a high-level meeting resulted in the announcement of the following measures (posted here by the FC Anutin Facebook page):

• Boosting biofuel usage by shifting biodiesel blend from B5 to B7 to reduce reliance on imported oil (Thailand is the world’s third largest producer of palm oil)

• Restructuring prices to make Gasohol E20 more attractive than E10 (Thailand is a major producer of ethanol and indeed has a surplus due to overcapacity)

• Ensuring that industrial users do not run out of fuel

• Seeking alternative sources of energy, such as increasing gas production in the Gulf of Thailand and increasing electricity imports from Laos,

• Freezing the price of cooking gas for two more months

• Announcing an energy-saving campaign

Nation Thailand reported that “a source at the Energy Ministry told Krungthep Turakij that the ministry has developed a proactive energy contingency plan.” This includes the issuing of an emergency decree permitting the Ministry of Finance to guarantee loans for the Oil Fuel Fund so that prices can continue to be subsidized (similar to what was done in 2022 during the initial stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). The government is also seeking to secure more oil supplies from the United States, Africa, and Malaysia.

Where is the energy saving campaign?

The energy saving campaign that the government is looking to launch includes measures such as:

• Setting air conditioning temperatures to 26°C.

• Regularly check car engine conditions to ensure maximum efficiency and reduce fuel consumption.

• Allowing employees to work from home

Thailand is not alone in launching these energy-saving measures. The Guardian’s Rebecca Ratcliffe reports that in the Philippines, “All national government agencies, state universities and colleges, and local government branches have been told to reduce fuel consumption by at least 10% in response to the crisis in the Middle East.”

Several political parties have for days been pushing for a national campaign. On March 4, the People’s Party called on the government to immediately set an example by implementing energy-saving measures within the bureaucracy. Democrat deputy leader Korn Chatikavanij yesterday called on the government to signal strongly to the private sector that people should increase working from home.

The government is perhaps trying to minimize panic — a run on gas stations would not be helpful. And of course, there is a possibility that the Middle Eastern conflict could end sooner rather than later, limiting the scale of the global energy shock (although prices are still likely to increase even if the war ended today).3 But should it not, Thais will thank Anutin for taking more decisive action now rather than acting too indecisively.

Good morning from The Coffee Parliament. Over the next few weeks, I plan to release some in-depth analyses of the 2026 general election results. The first piece will be on the election results in Bangkok, and it should be out in a couple of days.

Today’s update is a short overview to catch you up to speed on some important developments over the past week.

The political calendar

We now have a rough political calendar for the next two months.

• His Majesty the King will preside over the opening of the new session of parliament on March 14.

• The selection of the new Speaker of the House of Representatives will be conducted shortly after, as the first order of business of the new parliament. Current rumors indicate that Sophon Saram, currently deputy prime minister and a close associate of Newin Chidchob, will be taking this post.

• Some reports are suggesting that March 19 may be the date for the election of the new prime minister. Anutin Charnvirakul will almost certainly be selected for his second term.

• The new cabinet will then be appointed and the government will make their policy declaration to parliament. (The new government cannot begin their duties until the policy declaration has been made). All of this will likely conclude in April.

Coalition makeup

All the major news agencies have reported that Bhumjaithai has “closed the deal” on the makeup of the next government. It will be a “purple coalition” composed of Bhumjaithai as the coalition leader, Pheu Thai as the largest junior partner, and a constellation of small parties, such as Palang Pracharath and Prachachart, as stabilizing allies. Neither Kla Tham or the Democrat Party have been invited to join this government. The new government will have 293 seats in parliament.

These reports say that Bhumjaithai is likely to take over 14 ministries and 26 cabinet positions, including Bhumjaithai’s three star technocrats (Ekniti Nitithanpraphas, Supajee Suthumpun, Sihasak Phuangketkeow). Bowornsak Uwanno is likely to be re-appointed as deputy prime minister for legal affairs. As noted previously, Bhumjaithai will also take the speakership and one deputy speakership. Bhumjaithai will most likely be taking control of all ministries related to the economy and security. A defense minister has not yet been decided. Pheu Thai will receive nine cabinet posts, likely to be education, higher education and research, social development and human security, labour, and agriculture. Palang Pracharath is likely to receive one cabinet post.

We will see how close these reports are to the final makeup when it is announced in the next few weeks, but there is no reason to believe that these are widely off the mark, as they track with all the rumors surfacing since the general election. The reports do note that both Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai have proposed more candidates than seats available to Anutin, so it appears that no final selections have been made.

One more thing: the global energy situation

An unexpected task facing Anutin as he forms his second government is the global energy situation. According to Energy Minister Auttapol Rerkpiboon, Thailand has sufficient oil reserves for 65 days, but supplemental measures will bring that number up to 95 days. The Oil Fuel Fund continues to cap energy prices. The prime minister has now appointed a special task force to watch the situation in the Middle East and manage the fallout. We’ll keep an eye out on developments in this area.

Dear readers of The Coffee Parliament,

We have some down time between the end of the election season and before the political calendar ramps up again with the opening of parliament. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul appears to be in no hurry to finalize the makeup of his coalition government, which I think all Thai politics observers can be grateful for because we all need a breather.

I launched The Coffee Parliament on January 30th, 2025. Its first anniversary was right in the climax of election season, and so the date completely slipped my mind. It wasn’t until later in February that I realized this Substack is now over a year old! There wasn’t really a break in how busy Thai politics was until the end of the month, however, so here I am to reflect on this milestone a month late. But in a way, perhaps it’s only appropriate after the recent election campaign to reflect on one year plus of this Substack. (All regular readers surely understand the reference).

Firstly, a big thank you to all readers of The Coffee Parliament. When I launched this newsletter, I had no idea if it would gain a meaningful level of readership. Thailand is a country of 70 million people, but Thai political analysis written in English remains a bit of a niche industry. One friend asked who the audience is for an English newsletter on Thai politics! Yet between January 30, 2025 and January 30, 2026, The Coffee Parliament had almost 60,000 views and over 70,000 email views.

This was certainly in large part driven by the frenetic pace of Thai politics in 2025, something I did not anticipate at all when I started the Substack. (Indeed, I thought we were going to be looking at the stable third year of a Pheu Thai government — which just goes to show that we political analysts really don’t have crystal balls). Over the past year, I’ve covered local elections, a general election, two rounds of border conflicts, the fall of one prime minister and the emergence of another, multiple cabinet changes, and a lot of miscellaneous news on top of that. To put it mildly: what a year.1

Some of the articles I enjoyed writing the most from this first year were:

• Party in the Provinces (a look at how party brands have taken on greater prominence in local politics)

• Looking Beyond ‘Why Nations Fail’ (written after Thais obsessed over the book at the start of the year)

• On the “Domestic Rivalry Theory” and the “International Family Feud Theory” (a piece on the origins of the first round of Thai-Cambodian conflict, which became the most popular piece from the past year)

• Bhumjaithai’s New Coalition Emerges (the political scientist in me was surprised to see Thailand’s first confidence and supply agreement)

• The Death of an Old Party (I primarily study political party institutionalization, so you’ll understand that this was of particular interest)

• Bhumjaithai’s Big House Edge (where I covered the most important driver of what became Bhumjaithai’s election victory)

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking more about the role of a political newsletter as AI models get better. I’m sure that all political analysts are keenly aware that acquiring and summarizing the news is one thing that LLMs are easily capable of. The question that must lurk perilously in the deepest recesses of all our minds, then, is whether writers of political analysis will become obsolete. I think, however, that there is still room for a newsletter that brings you ideas propagated by a human, and with prose that is human-written — in a way that goes beyond just an artistic appreciation for the handmade. At the very least, I hope that over the past year this newsletter has been able to take you on contextualized deep dives of Thai politics that go significantly beyond what AI summaries can provide.

With some luck, this year will be a reversion to the mean in terms of the level of political activity in Thailand, which while potentially less exciting does give us space to analyze issues more deeply. The Coffee Parliament remains completely free to read for now, and if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past year, I do hope that you’ll recommend this newsletter to the Thai politics enthusiasts in your circle.

Thank you once again, and please let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for this newsletter as it enters its second year.

Best wishes,

Ken

March 2nd, 2026

In the past few pieces, I’ve alluded to the ongoing debate regarding the barcodes that were printed on the ballots used in the 2026 general election. I want to take some time in today’s newsletter to take a more in depth look at this controversy and what it could mean for the political landscape.

The barcodes that were printed on the ballots in this election are new and have not been used in previous elections. It has been found that scanning these barcodes reveals a unique and ordered serial number. Critics have seized on this innovation to argue that it could be theoretically possible that someone in possession of the ballot paper, its stub, and a voter list at that specific voting station would thus be able to trace the voter who used that specific ballot, which could compromise thus compromise the secrecy of each voter’s choices. This, they argue, would contravene Section 85 of the 2017 Constitution, which states: “Members of the House of Representatives who are elected on a constituency basis shall be elected by direct suffrage and secret ballot.”

The Electoral Commission argues that these barcodes were used in order to prevent fabricating ballots, counting to ensure that the number of ballots in each roll is correct, and tracking the origin of lost ballots. The three components necessary to trace a voter’s specific choice (the ballot paper, the stub, and the voter list) are needed together, and thus without possession of all of these materials, the principle of the secret ballot is upheld.

This controversy has brought in Thailand’s most famous legal heavyweights. Dr. Wissanu Kruea-ngarm, former deputy prime minister for legal affairs, was the first to weigh in. Wissanu said:

If you ask for my personal opinion, I think that this is wrong. It is not a secret, because if someone wants to, they are able to go back and trace [the voter’s choice]. Is there a possibility of finding out? If so, then it is not a secret. Section 85 of the Constitution states that [voting] must remain a secret. That means secrecy from this world entirely.

The principle of the secret ballot, Wissanu argued, means that the identity of the person who cast that ballot must remain a secret for eternity. Although he emphasized this was merely his personal opinion and that he could be wrong, Wissanu noted that if the Constitutional Court does rule that Section 85 was violated, he sees few options other holding a new election nationwide.

On the other side of this debate is Dr. Bowornsak Uwanno, the current deputy prime minister in charge of legal affairs and another prominent scholar of constitutional law. (See his posts here and here). Bowornsak noted that “some legal gurus have ‘leaped over Lanka’1 and argued that a ‘secret ‘means it must be secret from the entire world.” However, Bowornsak argued that such a secret does not exist in practicality, and the barcodes do not contravene the principle of the secret ballot. He made a couple of key points:

1. It is the role of the EC to ensure the election is conducted cleanly. In the past, he noted, ballot stuffing has been noted. Barcodes ensure that this cannot happen.

2. Three of the countries which began the conduct of the secret ballot, namely the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, also use similar mechanisms. In no country has an election ever been annulled because of the use of barcodes.

3. A “secret” does not mean that responsible officials cannot access that information. In an election, the responsible officials are the Electoral Commission.

4. A Constitutional Court ruling from 2018 argued, in a case on having an official assist the disabled and the elderly with marking their ballots: “As long as there is no public dissemination of that disabled or elderly person’s voting choice to the public, then it can be considered a vote conducted directly and secretly.”

The uncertainty over whether the constitution was violated means there are plenty willing to test the waters. The Ombudsman has revealed that 28 cases have already been filed, which may be forwarded to the Constitutional Court for an opinion. The EC has been operating carefully, using ballots with no barcodes in election reruns conducted on Sunday. This led People’s Party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut to ask whether or not this is an admission that the ballots used on February 8th were problematic.

Ultimately, it is likely that this case will be heard in front of the Constitutional Court. Will it lead to an annulled election? I don’t have a firm prediction to make here, although I have a hunch that the Constitutional Court’s precedent from 2018 (cited by Dr. Bowornsak) would indeed provide those who take up the EC’s side of the debate with firm footing to stand on in a legal battle. Meanwhile, the Bhumjaithai government will proceed with politics as usual as it continues to form a government — more on that soon.

Some miscellaneous updates:

• I wrote an article for Asialink Insights on why Bhumjaithai won.

• I also want to give a shoutout to Napon Jatusripitak’s election data hub, which is now by far the best way for you to browse through various ways to visualize the election results. Check it out here!

We are now nearing two weeks after the general election, and there is still an interesting and unexpected lack of clarity about the makeup of the next Bhumjaithai-led coalition government.

A few more small parties have officially joined the Bhumjaithai coalition, after the addition of Pheu Thai last week, and the government can now count on 296 MPs. Logically speaking Bhumjaithai should probably just stop there; a majority of close to 50 is sufficient to ensure that the government is stable and ensures that the coalition is not so big that allocation of cabinet posts becomes too difficult. The only concern would be that Pheu Thai, with its 74 MPs, could become a veto player inside the government, as it could alone topple the coalition if it chooses to leave.

That brings us to the question of whether Kla Tham will join the government. I wrote about this topic last week, and we still have no clarity on that front. Take a look at these mixed signals.

Pai Lik, the Kla Tham secretary-general, said that the party has absolutely no conditions for joining the government. This could theoretically mean that it would be willing to concede the Ministry of Agriculture, which earlier media reports suggested was a ministry that Bhumjaithai was keen to take back. Pai also said that Kla Tham PM candidate Thammanat Promphao is not requiring that he himself take a cabinet post.

Most revealing has been comments from Thammanat himself. At a press conference today, Thammanat hit back at rumors that constitutional ethics requirements has made Bhumjaithai reluctant to include Kla Tham in its cabinet lineup, saying: “Whoever appointed me as a minister, if you think that I am in the wrong, then you will also be in the wrong.” When asked about the small parties that have been supporting Bhumjaithai, he retorted: “Have you ever heard of illusions?” And to top it all off, Thammanat noted: “Kla Tham is not scared of being squeezed by anybody. But if you squeeze me, beware of being hit back. In my life I’ve never picked a fight with anyone first, but if they do with me they will have nightmares.”

Thammanat also earlier suggested that the media focus more on the issue of ballot barcodes than on coalition formation. The use of barcodes on election ballots this year have become an increasingly controversial topic of discussion. The gist is this: some argue that these barcodes can be used to track who each person voted for, which would violate the constitutional principle of a secret ballot and thus potentially nullify the election. (The legal expert Wissanu Kruea-ngarm is among those who think that this could be an issue). That Thammanat would bring this up right now, when there is a lot of uncertainty about whether Kla Tham will be in government, is an interesting move.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has provided little comment on this matter. He was seen speaking to Kla Tham leader Narumon Pinyosinwat, but reports suggested that Anutin and Thammanat have not yet met since the election. The past week’s cabinet meeting was reported to have been a tense affair.

Overall, it is clear that not all is well with the Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham relationship, and earlier pre-election speculation that the two have formed an unbreakable alliance was premature. If Bhumjaithai truly were set on having Kla Tham in the coalition, it would be a simple matter to invite them to a press conference the way they did with Pheu Thai last week. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet, allowing all these rumors to fester and increasing the amount of bad blood between the two parties, suggests that there really is a world in which the two parties are headed for divorce. Even if they remain together, the tense relationship must certainly have some impact on their ability to cooperate in government.

There were also reports that Bhumjaithai will be administering the ministries that oversee the economy and security, while Pheu Thai will mostly be administering ministries related to society, although Pheu Thai secretary-general Prasert Jantararuangtong said that this has not yet been finalized. It will likely be weeks before we have a better idea of the final shape of the next government.