Pheu Thai crashes: Why Thailand’s electoral juggernaut hit the wall

The Pheu Thai Party suffered a bitter defeat in Sunday’s election, losing even in its figurehead’s hometown of Chiang Mai. A dominant electoral force in Thailand for two decades, Pheu Thai plummeted to third in the party pecking order, leaving it with two options – transform or collapse.

“Pheu Thai was the biggest loser,” said Naresuan University social science lecturer Chaipong Samnieng of Sunday’s election.

Pheu Thai’s secretary-general, Prasert Jantararuangtong, promised the party would analyse the result and learn lessons to improve its performance at the ballot box in future.

Unofficial results show Pheu Thai will have 74 MPs – 58 from constituency polls and 16 from the party-list system – when the new Parliament convenes, likely in April.

These numbers are sharply down from 2023, when the party secured 141 seats in Parliament – 112 constituency and 29 party-list MPs.

Three years later, party-list votes for Pheu Thai have fallen by more than half – from 10.9 million to just 5.14 million.

Pheu Thai is the third incarnation of Thaksin Shinawatra’s original electoral juggernaut, the Thai Rak Thai (TRT) Party.

TRT burst onto the political scene in 2001, winning 248 out of 500 MP seats thanks to bold policy pledges including the Bt30-per-visit healthcare project (now known as the universal healthcare scheme) and the Bt1 million village fund.

Four years later, voters rewarded TRT with a landslide victory, sending 377 of its candidates to Parliament at the 2005 election.

Although the stronger performance was partly attributed to its roots as an alliance of various political factions, TRT policies were also a resounding hit with Thai voters.

The party campaigned for the 2005 election under the slogan “After 4 Years of Fixing Problems, 4 Years of Building the Future”.

Despite being ousted by the military in 2006 and later dissolved, TRT reincarnated as the People’s Power Party and retained its electoral dominance, securing 233 MPs at the 2007 vote.

Party leader Samak Sundaravej lasted six months as prime minister before being removed for appearing on a televised cooking show and being replaced by Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat.

People’s Power was dissolved in 2008 on charges of electoral fraud but reincarnated as Pheu Thai in time to contest the 2011 election.

The party won its third national vote in a row, securing 265 seats in Parliament along with the premiership for Thaksin’s youngest sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

After Yingluck’s government was overthrown by a military coup in 2014, Pheu Thai managed to retain popularity through five years of junta rule, winning 136 seats in the 2019 election.

However, it fell short of the threshold required to form a government, instead playing opposition to a military-aligned coalition led by the Palang Pracharath Party.

What went wrong?

Lecturer Chaipong said Pheu Thai’s decline was already evident in the 2023 election, when it was overtaken as the country’s largest party by the liberal Move Forward Party – now known as the People’s Party.

He attributed the setback to overconfidence and to its decision to form a government with parties aligned with the same military that carried out the deadly 2010 crackdown on its supporters and the 2014 coup that toppled Yingluck’s administration.

“Pheu Thai seemed to believe it could field anybody in the 2023 election, and many of its MPs didn’t bother to engage with voters on the ground.”

Kasem Phenpinant, a philosophy lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Arts, pointed out that Pheu Thai is widely considered to be the Shinawatras’ party.

“You can see this clearly from the choice of its prime ministerial candidates,” he said.

Two years ago, Thaksin’s youngest daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra replaced Srettha Thavisin as prime minister after he was disqualified for breaking rules with a Cabinet appointment.

Last June, Pheu Thai was thrown into disarray when Paetongtarn was accused of kow-towing to Cambodian strongman Hun Sen and criticising one of her own military generals in a leaked phone call over the border dispute. She was removed from office by the Constitutional Court in August.

“Her team [in government], which included her friends, also caused a lot of damage,” Kasem said.

Yet despite her downfall, Pheu Thai again turned to the Shinawatra clan for its PM candidate in the latest election – this time nominating Somchai’s son and Thaksin’s nephew, Yodchanan Wongsawat.

Asked if Pheu Thai’s performance was undermined by Thaksin’s imprisonment, Chaipong said even if he had been free, he would have made little difference, as his popularity has faded even among die-hard supporters.

Thaksin was ordered to serve his one-year sentence in the Bangkok Remand Prison in September last year after the Supreme Court found his prolonged hospital stay unlawful.

“People don’t buy his image anymore. Across the entire Northern region, Pheu Thai only won nine seats this time,” he said of the party’s former stronghold.

Thaksin’s top advisers, who had previously helped him consolidate power, had also failed to keep up with new trends in the political landscape, he added.

“Things have changed,” he said, adding that Pheu Thai had prioritised populist policies over its own core ideology, making it hard to distinguish from several other parties.

“Pheu Thai’s ethos is no longer about struggling against the elite and fighting for democracy.”

In contrast, the party’s 2019 and 2023 election campaigns targeted the 2014 coup makers or the “3Ps” – General Prawit

Wongsuwan (“Big Pom”), General Anupong Paojinda (“Big Pok”), and General Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Changes needed

Yuttaporn Issarachai, a political-science lecturer at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, said Pheu Thai has become a party of the older generation. Despite recruiting young people, its policies had failed to keep pace with the aims and aspirations of youthful voters.

“It’s still steered by the older generation,” he said, noting that the People’s Party, as Thailand’s second-largest party, has now established itself as the representative of the new generation.

Chaipong said that to prevent its popularity sliding further, Pheu Thai must recruit qualified and capable members instead of “relying on young people from political families”.

It should shift its focus from political veterans to constituency-based politicians who work closely with voters and “step out of its own self-congratulatory echo chamber”, he added.

He also urged the party to return to its pro-democracy stance and find ways to differentiate itself from other parties.