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The Move Forward Party, previously the largest party in the current Thai parliament, has now been dissolved. This follows a previous Constitutional Court ruling that the party’s actions in seeking amendment of Section 112 of the Criminal Code constituted an attempt to overthrow the Thai political system. The party’s executive members, including the former prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat, has been banned from politics for ten years.
What will happen next? Here are three takeaways from the MFP’s dissolution.
1. Move Forward’s members will set up a successor party.
Party dissolutions over the past two decades have become a tradition that repeats itself every couple of years. Three parties affiliated with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra were dissolved between 2001 and 2019. In 2020, the predecessor of the MFP, the Future Forward Party, had also been dissolved. As the body died, however, in every instance the spirit has lived on: each party has been able to regenerate into a new incarnation. There is no reason to believe that this will be different for the Move Forward Party.
Media reports leading up to the MFP’s dissolution suggested that the party may already have found a new vehicle to carry on its mission. The preexisting Thinkakhao Chaovilai Party’s infrastructure will be taken over and rebranded into the MFP’s successor party. This would follow a similar playbook as the MFP itself followed after the FFP’s dissolution in 2020, when the Ruam Pattana Chart Thai Party was taken over.
Taking over a preexisting party makes the process of transitioning to a new party relatively easy for the now-defunct MFP. The party’s leaders will not have to go through the process of registering a new party and setting up entirely new local branches. The party’s MPs will also be able to simply switch their affiliation to this new party, which they must do in sixty days.
It has most recently been rumored that Sirikanya Tansakul, previously the deputy leader of the MFP, will become the leader of the MFP’s successor party. Sirikanya, who holds degrees in economics, served as the head of the MFP’s economic team, and when the party was initially preparing to form a government last year had been tipped to become Minister of Finance. If she is to become the leader of the MFP’s successor party, that would set up the next election primarily as a race between two female leaders, as Pheu Thai is currently headed by Thaksin’s daughter Paethongtharn Shinawatra. She would also likely become the first female leader of the opposition in Thai history.
However, Sirikanya’s nomination as the new party’s leader represents risks. In particular, she was one of the parliamentary signatories of the proposal to amend Section 112. There is a currently an ethics case with the National Anti-Corruption Commission on this issue, which could result in her removal as MP.
2. Where will Move Forward’s MPs go?
The biggest initial question is whether or not every ex-MP who belonged to the MFP will go to the same successor party, or whether some will become turncoats and switch affiliations to another party instead. In 2020, when the FFP had been dissolved, ten MPs had left the opposition and joined with the government coalition instead. Eight joined the Bhumjaithai Party, one joined Chart Pattana, and the other switched to Chart Thai Pattana. At the time, this was a significant deterioration in the party’s strength.
Whether or not a similar scenario will repeat itself remains to be seen. A lesson that current ex-MFP members of parliament may take from the “cobras,” as parliamentary turncoats are called in Thai politics, is that every single one that ran for re-election lost in 2023. In the days leading up to the dissolution, a MFP MP claimed that he was offered 30 million baht to switch parties. Meanwhile, the relaunching of a party called the Kla Tham Party led reporters to ask their new leader, former deputy minister Naruemon Pinyosinwat, whether or not the party was being prepared to welcome cobras from the MFP. Naruemon, who was previously affiliated with the coalition Palang Pracharath Party, only said that she had not yet held these talks and that she would wait for the legal process to play out. In any case, if history is any guide, it would appear unlikely that all of the ex-MFP MPs will end up at the same destination.
One smaller impact that is still worth discussing: one of the deputy house speakerships was held by Padipat Suntiphada, a former MFP member who switched to the Fair Party due to a technicality. He was also banned from politics as a formemr member of the MFP executive board, and so the House of Representatives will have to elect a new deputy speaker.
3. Unclear short-term impact, predictable long-term trend
What will be the impact of the MFP’s dissolution on the wider political landscape? For the immediate term, it is too early to tell. The dissolution of the FFP was the catalyst for a series of protests that eventually evolved into calls for reform of the wider political system. It is entirely possible, although by no means guaranteed, that a similar return to political instability could happen, especially given the fact that the MFP had won the most votes at last year’s election.
For the medium to long term, however, we can make a number of predictions. For one, Thailand’s political landscape has not changed. The grand compromise between Pheu Thai and the conservative parties had been forged last year out of a necessity to lock the MFPd out of power, and the emergence of the MFP’s successor party has not changed this dynamic in the slightest. The only threat to the numbers of the progressives would result only if an election is held immediately while the new successor party is not yet ready for battle, but that scenario is highly unlikely given the government’s unpopularity and the high risk it would entail.
In addition, once again drawing on recent Thai political history, party dissolutions have done little to dent the momentum of that particular political camp, representing instead a temporary speed-bump. Indeed, after the Thai Rak Thai Party was dissolved, the successor Palang Prachachon Party won the next set of elections; when Palang Prachachon was dissolved, Pheu Thai also won the next round. The MFP won in 2023 after the FWP was dissolved in 2020. If precedent holds, the MFP’s successor party would remain well-positioned to win the next election, and the Pheu Thai coalition will still have to confront the still-unresolved question of how to defeat the progressives — a task that opinion polling shows is an uphill battle.
At the same time, there will have to be large changes in how the MFP’s successor party campaigns. Last year, the MFP had made amendment to Section 112 of the criminal code, which criminalizes defamation of the royal institution, a core plank of their election proposal. Indeed, the MFP was unable to form a government after they refused to back down on this proposal, which conservative parties such as Bhumjaithai had demanded in exchange for their support. Now, it is this proposal that has brought forward the party’s death, and its successor will certainly take note.