Good morning from The Coffee Parliament. There has been a lot going on, including a slew of prime ministerial activity on foreign policy. (Unbelievably, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul’s visit to Indonesia in early August was the first by a Thai prime minister in 15 years; he also visited Australia and New Zealand, the first by a Thai PM in 14 and 13 years, respectively). We’re going to set aside analysis of the jet-setting for now, however, and take some time today to look at the most urgent controversy engulfing Thai politics: the Senate collusion case.
What exactly is this case about, again? In 2024, Thailand selected a new Senate using the procedures specified in the 2017 Constitution for the first time. This involved a very complicated process of self-selection amongst candidates, one that, as far as my knowledge of comparative political institutions goes, is not used anywhere else in the world. (If you are interested in the full details of how selection to the Senate works, Napon Jatusripitak has an excellent summary here).
Not very long after the Senate selection process concluded, allegations emerged that it had been dominated by “collusion” (Thai: hua sor wor), marked by coordinated bloc voting directed by partisan actors and bribery.1 If true, these actions would violate multiple laws, including Section 113 of the 2017 Constitution (which prohibits senators from acting under the influence of any political party)2 and multiple sections of the Organic Act on the Acquisition of Senators (translation available here). Legal petitions to the Electoral Commission (EC) has led to 138 incumbent senators being accused of involvement in collusive activities, along with 13 ministers and 17 Bhumjaithai MPs (including Anutin).
The EC will decide by September 14th whether or not it will forward the case to the Supreme Court. Hence the political temperature surrounding this case has been heating up. Activists have put pressure on the EC to take action, while Bhumjaithai threatened to take legal action against activists on what it views as defamation. The People’s Party politician Parit Wacharasindhu insisted that he believes the legal case to be airtight enough for the case to be forwarded, while Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva upped the rhetoric by hypothetically asking whether Senate domination by a political party constitutes an attempt to overthrow the system of governance. Anutin as Bhumjaithai leader says, of course, that he and the government were not involved in any collusion.
Although Bhumjaithai has been facing increasing potential obstacles, so far the government has been largely stable. It is likely to sail through upcoming votes on the budget and a possible no confidence debate later this year, given the Bhumjaithai-Pheu Thai coalition’s majority in parliament. The Senate legal question thus represents the biggest question mark hanging over the Anutin government right now. If guilty verdicts are delivered on all of the accused, the government would become untenable in its current form, as violations of the law on Senate selection can result in a twenty-year ban from politics. It’s worth noting here, however, that the recently-passed Amnesty Bill may apply to the Senate collusion case, depending on how the case is classified.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The EC will first have to decide what to do, and Prachachat notes here that there are three possible outcomes. It could decide to forward the case on all implicated individuals. It could spare all of them. Or, it could recommend only some individuals to the court for legal action — and if this is the case we will have to see who the EC picks. (One particularly thorny dimension of this legal case is the fact that the Senate has the constitutional power to appoint members of various independent agencies, including the EC. BBC News Thai notes here that of the seven sitting commissioners, four were selected by the current Senate.)
No predictions from me on what the EC will decide, but as a busy political calendar arrives with the resumption of parliamentary business, this case will be one of many things we have to keep an eye on in the next few months.
The 2017 Constitution drafters envisioned that the Thai Senate to be a party-free body. But as this piece in The Diplomat argued, “At the end of the day, Senators are politicians no matter how you select them, and Thailand will eventually have to come to terms with this reality.”
The irony of The Senate, responsible for the selection of members of checks and balances organisations, being itself potentially composed through illegal means, is palpable.