On June 5 2019, Thailand’s joint-parliament voted to have General Prayut Chan-ocha continue as Prime Minister. Though his title as Prime Minister may be more legitimate following the 2019 election than the 2014 coup, still the irregularities of his appointment should disqualify Prayut Chan-ocha and his supporters from proudly claiming he is a fairly elected head of government.
1. Prayut never ran to be an elected MP and would have been disqualified.
During the 2019 election campaign, candidates visited constituencies, proposed policies and ideas, going door to door to meet people and “ask for votes”. Gen. Prayut was the only candidate that did not participate in these types of activities — he never did a local constituency campaign, never joined any debate to announce a clear platform, never represented the party which he was a candidate for. He only showed up on the final stage once before the election. General Prayut and his ideas for the future of Thailand were not clearly representative of the people who voted for Palang Pracharat Party.
Also during the 2019 election, Gen Prayut Chan-ocha was the only Prime Ministerial candidate that did not run to be an elected Member of Parliament. Though it was predicted that Gen. Prayut would return to office after the election, it was not until the last date of the recruitment that Gen. Prayut was officially named by the Palang Pracharath Party without running to be an MP.
If Gen Prayut had decided to campaign as an MP, his position as the leader of the NCPO which is a ‘government officer’ technically violates section 89,98 and 160 of the Constitution and would disqualify him from this role.
2. Prayut had absolute power as Head of NCPO during the election.
During the election, Gen. Prayut could have ceased duty, resigned from his position as leader of the NCPO or chosen to serve as an acting government to promote transparency and avoid the exercise of any power above the election. Instead, Gen. Prayut did the opposite, he remained in his position, keeping exclusive power to appoint or dismiss any state authority, keeping power to make various decisions over the national resources, and maintaining the power to approve any upcoming state projects.
Importantly, Gen. Prayut under “Section 44” also had the authority to issue any order, restrain or perform any act whether or not that act enters into legislative, executive or judicial power. Gen. Prayut exercised this power to amend the election rules at least three times as follows:
First, the Head of NCPO Order No. 53/2560: Unlock the new party – reset the old political parties’ members;
Second, the Head of NCPO order No. 13/2561: Cancel the primary vote obligation – prohibit online campaign – extend the time for the political parties;
Third, the Head of NCPO Order No. 16/2561: Order Election Commission (EC) to redivide the constituency if NCPO or the government receives any complaint.
3. NCPO designs new election system to favor itself.
The election system and rules in the Constitution were written by Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) which was appointed by NCPO. In addition, the details which must be written in the Organic Law on Political Parties and the Organic Law on the Election of Member of Parliaments were written by the former CDC and were approved by the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) which were also appointed by NCPO. It can be said that the rules of this election were written by NCPO and its allies.
The new election system named, “Mixed Member Apportionment” or MMA was written to give the disadvantages to the big political party which received a big number of the constituency Member of Parliament (MPs). In other words, it was set with the intention of getting rid of Pheu Thai Party directly and it achieved that result. In addition, it helped medium-sized political parties have an advantage in gaining MPs from the party-list system. Somsak Thepsutin, the leader of Palang Pracharat Party even once said: “this Constitution was designed for us”.
4. The Election Commission and Constitution Court were selected by NCPO
The NCPO eventually dismissed the former Election Commission (EC) from its position entirely and began a new recruitment process by both ‘Section 44’ and the new EC organic law. In forming the new EC recruitment committee, Pornpech Vichit Cholchai, the NCPO-appointed president of NLA, was appointed to this recruitment committee. Proposed nominees for the new EC had to be submitted to the NLA who could accept or reject the applicants. NLA assessed three rounds of applicants – first, NLA voted to reject all the seven nominees as members of EC. The second batch of seven nominees was tabled for consideration of the NLA and only five were approved. During the third application round, the two names proposed by the recruitment committee were accepted by NLA resulting in all seven members satisfied. So in summary, the selection of new Election Commissioners was conducted through a two-stage process, the application for the recruitment committee and the approval from the NLA, and both of these bodies involved NCPO appointed authorities.
The Constitutional Court or any organization diagnosing the significant issues regarding the election are all the people of NCPO. Two of the judges came from the selection system, like the EC, while the other five came from through exercising Section 44 has been extended their terms until after the election.
5. Anti-junta parties faced many additional difficulties during the campaign.
Before the election all political parties were subjected to the NCPO Announcement No. 57/2557, which prohibits political activities unless the NCPO allows it, this order lasted until December 22, 2018. During that time, the NCPO was the only political group that could continue communicating with the people.
Anti-junta parties faced additional difficulties during the election, some politicians were followed by soldiers or police while visiting constituencies, some were not allowed to give public speeches, not allowed to enter certain spaces and anti-junta media was censored – Voice TV station was shut down. In addition, anti-junta MP candidates were accused of many criminal charges, for example, Pol. Gen. Seripisut Temiyavet, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, Piyabutr Saengkanokkul were accused of violating the Computer Crimes Act after criticising Palang Pracharat Party.
6. The second largest anti-junta party was dissolved.
During the election, Pheu Thai Party tried to counter the NCPO’s new election system by dividing into many medium-size parties. Thai Raksa Chart Party (Thai Save the Nation Party or TSN), the second largest party in the Pheu Thai network, and Pheu Thai Party divided their constituencies and sent 200 MPs from Pheu Thai Party and 150 MPs from TSN to different constituencies. However, later, the TSN was ordered by Constitutional Court to dissolve due to the nomination of Princess Ubolratana, as its prime ministerial candidate.
The dissolution of the Thai Raksa Chart Party caused many political parties in this group to lose their political game. In addition to losing important MP candidates such as Chaturon Chaisang, Natthawut Saikuea, Pichai Naripthaphan, it also lost the opportunity to get the vote in the constituencies where the Pheu Thai Party did not send candidates. This means, people in certain areas had no opportunity to vote for candidates from this group of anti-junta political parties at all.
7. Pheu Thai has the most seats in the lower house.
According to International and Thailand political tradition, the political party that receives the most MPs from the election will be the leader to form the government. The winning party will be the mainstay in gathering the other parties’ seats to be more than half of the parliament. Pheu Thai Party is the party which won the highest number of seats in this election, which is 136 seats. The second highest is Palang Pracharat Party, 116 seats. Pursuant to the political tradition, Pheu Thai should have formed the government and the other parties should step back. However, the Palang Pracharat Party claimed that it won the popular vote and will be the leader of government itself, without any political laws or customs supporting this principle.
Pheu Thai Party got 7,881,006 votes from 200 constituencies compared with 8,413,413 votes for Palang Pracharat coming from 350 constituencies.
8. Popular vote count of combined anti-junta parties is almost twice as high
Pheu Thai Party got a total of 7,881,006 votes, Future Forward Party got 6,254,716 votes, Seree Ruam Thai Party got 822,240 votes, New Economics Party got 485,574 votes, Prachachat Party got 481,143 votes, Pheu Chart Party received 419,121 votes, Palang Puangchon Thai Party got 79,783 votes, Phue Tham Party got 15,130 votes and Commoners Party received 5,291 votes respectively. Combining all these anti-junta votes, the total adds up to 16,444,004 votes.
On the other hand, the political parties that declared to support NCPO and support Gen. Prayut to be the Prime Minister, Palang Pracharat Party received the total 8,413,413 votes, Action Coalition for Thailand Party got 415,202 votes and People Reform Party got 45,374 votes. When combining all votes, the votes support NCPO are only 8,873,989 votes, which is a little over half the number of votes that anti-junta parties received.
Therefore, if considering the popular vote, then it is obvious that most people in the country did not vote for Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha to be the Prime Minister
9. The anti-junta parties gathered more than half of the lower house before the formula was changed.
After election day, knowing the unofficial results of the election, media and specialists calculated the seats of the party-list MPs and released in the same way. The seven anti-junta parties had a total of 254 out of 500 seats, a slight majority of the House. Without including senators, it was considered that Palang Pracharat Party and its “support-NCPO” parties had lost the election.
Weeks after that, the EC did not announce the result of the party-list MP seats and created a new calculation formula which is contradicted with Constitution and election law and has never been fully understood by anyone. The new formula appeared to lessen the seats of many parties, and gave an additional seat to eleven different small parties. Later, these eleven parties announced to support Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha to be the Prime Minister, meaning that the votes for the anti-junta parties were reduced to 245 votes, losing control of the lower house.
10. Without 250 senators in hand, he wouldn’t be able to gather seats from small parties.
Palang Pracharat Party, Action Coalition for Thailand Party and People Reform Party which announced before the election to “support Gen. Prayut”, had 122 seats in the lower house. This was not enough to select the prime minister. They needed to negotiate and integrate other political parties to form the government. Two political parties, Bhumjaithai with its 51 seats and Chartthaipattana with its 10 seats, announced their willingness to join in order to “make the country move forward”.
The reason behind this is that the 250 senators chosen by NCPO, in addition to voting for the prime minister, have power to consider legislation including the amendment of the Constitution and implementation of the National Strategy. This means if the anti-junta parties form the government, they will certainly face the obstacles from this group of senators and the government will be unstable. Therefore, the other parties we pressured to support Palang Pracharat Party in order to avoid faces challenges with the senate. It can, therefore, be assumed that the NCPO did not have the senators in its hands, it would have less legitimacy and political bargaining power to invite other political parties to join their side.