This week, the Palang Pracharath Party welcomed its former party leader, secretary-general, and chief strategist back into its ranks after it absorbed some of the leaders of the Sang Anakot Thai Party. Rejoining the PPRP will be Uttama Savanayana, Sontirat Sontijirawong, and General Vitch Devahasdin Na Ayudhya of the Ruam Pandin Party.
On the same day, it also held a fundraising banquet reminiscent of the previous one in 2018 and raised over 500 million baht in one day.
This series of moves is best understood as an attempt to project strength from a position of weakness. Prayut’s recent departure to a new political party left the PPRP vulnerable to losing support from its stakeholders and politicians to parties with better prospects.
The PPRP was originally formed based on a loose handshake involving the former junta, right-leaning conservatives, technocrats, electocrats who led factions that both struggled against and used each other to get what they wanted.
After the general election in 2019, infighting within the PPRP sharply intensified, first due to conflict over the Energy Ministry portfolio and later due to Thammanat’s conspiratorial maneuver to unseat Prayut in a no-confidence debate.
Intra-party turmoil seemed to reach a state of equilibrium after Thammanat was ousted, at least on paper. The party organization was restructured to reflect something I would describe as the Prawit Consensus. Prawit won and the PPRP survived, even when its members didn’t.
But having lost its technocrats, former PDRC leaders, and Prayut (plus whatever accompanies him), the PPRP is no longer the same party it was in 2019. The political landscape also shifted. The same electoral-authoritarian blueprint won’t work twice.
In light of this, the PPRP’s latest maneuvers signal a commitment to a new direction in the hope of transforming the party into a new kind of vehicle. Unlike Prayut’s UTN, the PPRP will be driven mostly by pragmatism, not by ideology.
Make no mistake: if this is a win, it’s mostly for Prawit. It solidifies his position as a political magnet with financial prowess and charisma, while offering no guaranteed returns to people who join/rejoin the PPRP expecting rewards. In short, the Prawit Consensus continues.