The long-postponed Bangkok elections will be an early litmus test for public sentiment if it takes place at the end of 2020 as planned.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said this week that the elections will likely be held in the last quarter of the year, countering statements made by his Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam who said that the government had no money leftover to hold elections after spending massively on coronavirus stimulus packages.
Bangkok Governor Aswin Kwanmuang is one of the remaining vestiges of the military junta that ruled Thailand from 2014-2019 having been appointed in 2016 by the army to replace Sukhumbhand Paribatra, who was seen as ineffective.
Former Democrat Stronghold
The Bangkok election will likely feature candidates from several parties including Thailand’s oldest political party, the Democrats,
The conservative and moderate Bangkok middle-class has long been a bastion of Democrat Party support until the last general elections where conservatives generally sided with the junta-aligned Palang Pracharath Party while the moderates and liberal voters flocked to the Future Forward banner.
With the Democrats likely running a candidate, this election should be a test to see how much ground the party has lost to the two new upstart parties.
Pheu Thai or Chadchart
It will also be interesting to see whether Pheu Thai decides to field a candidate or withhold and signal their support for former party member Chadchart Sittipunt.
The former Minister of Transport has resigned from the party and plans to run in the gubernatorial election as an independent candidate.
If Pheu Thai decides on the latter, it will show that the party still has trouble attracting a base in Bangkok following the red shirt protests of 2010.
Who will run for Palang Pracharath?
Will the ruling party run Aswin Kwanmuang as their candidate?
Aswin has done a stable if not significant job since his appointment in 2016 and his name recognition is not that great but he could be the best of a bad bunch as the Palang Pracharath party has suffered much negative press over the conduct of their MPs in and out of parliament including revelations about Deputy Agricultural Minister Thammanat Prompao.
The ruling party is also going through a massive shakeup that will likely see the replacement of party leader Uttama Svanayon with Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan.
Will Prawit, a military general, run more military men through the party or will he acquiesce to the civilian wing of the party?
What about Move Forward?
One of the biggest surprises of the 2019 general election was the ascendancy of the Future Forward Party, who appealed to young and liberal-leaning voters.
Even more surprising was how well the party did in Bangkok, given that nobody was expecting them to gain the number of seats they did.
Now with the Future Forward Party disbanded by the Constitutional Court and replaced by its successor Move Forward Party, can the organization still keep its momentum.
Move Forward Party executive member and MP Padipat Santipada said on Tuesday that the party will not participate in local elections and instead will focus their initiatives in parliament.
But party insiders tell Thai Enquirer that the party may endorse an independent candidate with close ties to the party. It remains to be seen who and whether the party can once again capture the public imagination.
(Additional reporting by James Wilson)
