Thai Leader Survives No-Confidence Motion, but Political Liabilities Remain The result was expected, but the former Thai general continues to struggle with a steep legitimacy deficit.

 

Thai Leader Survives No-Confidence Motion, but Political Liabilities Remain

The result was expected, but the former Thai general continues to struggle with a steep legitimacy deficit.

hailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has survived his third parliamentary vote of no-confidence, stabilizing his government, at least momentarily, as it weathers a storm of criticism for its  of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Prayut and five members of his cabinet won votes of confidence in Parliament on Saturday, after nearly a week of debates and small but persistent protests seeking the Thai leader’s resignation.

According to the press Prayut prevailed relatively comfortably in the 482-seat lower house of Parliament, gaining support from 264 of the 271 lawmakers that make up his ruling coalition. Some 208 parliamentarians voted in support of the motion, 34 short of the simple majority of 242 that the opposition needed to succeed.

While the prime minister survived with a healthy margin, the debate took place against the backdrop of rumors that secretary-general of Prayut’s Palang Pracharath party, a proxy of the military, might use the vote to unseat him, appoint an alternative prime minister, and pull the main opposition Pheu Thai party into its ruling coalition.

Prayut, the former commander in chief of the Thai army, came to power in a coup in May 2014 and ruled for five years by fiat. He then adopted a civilian guise after the election in March 2019, but given the highly flawed and circumscribed nature of the election, based on the patently undemocratic constitution drafted and passed by his military junta two years earlier, the transition back to “democratic” rule has done little to address his steep legitimacy deficit.

The flawed election, which was followed in early 2020 by the outlawing of the popular Future Forward party, which had won the third-most votes in the election, helped spark the campaign of large youth-led public demonstrations that surged through the second half of last year. The protests demanded Prayut’s resignation, the creation of a genuinely democratic constitution, and  the untouchable power of the Thai monarchy.

The protests have since shifted tack amid rising COVID-19 cases and a  by the Thai authorities, narrowing their focus from controversial issues like reform of the monarchy to the government’s concrete missteps in handling the pandemic. In particular, critics claim that the government wasted the head-start that Thailand gained through the successful containment of the virus in 2020.