Will Thaksin Shinawatra finally return to Thailand? Latest vow sparks intrigue, raises stakes ahead of polls
Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, hero to the rural poor but villain to the royalist establishment, on Tuesday vowed to return to the kingdom to face the legal system in July after years in self-exile, adding fresh intrigue to the final days of campaigning before a crucial May 14 poll.
The 73-year-old telecoms tycoon fled the kingdom in 2008 to avoid a two-year jail term over a land purchase, a conviction which followed a 2006 coup that toppled his government.
That power grab - by a military which refuses to leave power to civilians for long - sparked nearly two decades of political chaos from which the country is yet to emerge.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
Sunday's election is seen as the most consequential in recent history, with pro-democracy parties, led by the Shinawatra clan's Pheu Thai Party, seeking to push out 69-year-old Prayuth Chan-ocha - who seized power in a 2014 coup from Thaksin's sister Yingluck - and his conservative allies from power.
In two tweets on Tuesday, Thaksin put the clearest definition yet on the long rumbling issue of his return.
"I have made a decision to return to take care of my grandchildren in July before my birthday. I ask permission ... it's been almost 17 years that I have been away from my family, and I am now old."
Pheu Thai, now fronted by Thaksin's 36-year-old daughter Paetongtarn, is seeking a landslide of Lower House seats on Sunday to block Prayuth's route back to power, but faces a tough task in an electoral system manufactured to favour military proxy parties.
While Thaksin has no formal link to Pheu Thai, he is widely seen as pulling the strings from his overseas homes in London and Dubai, and speculation on his return invariably has a combustible impact on Thai politics.
"Please don't be concerned that I'm going to be a burden to the Pheu Thai party," Thaksin said in a follow-up tweet. "I will enter the legal process and the date I return will be the time when Prayuth Chan-ocha is still caretaker in office."
Addressing the tweets, a Pheu Thai spokesman later said the posts were Thaksin's personal positions and in no way linked to the party.
Thaksin and Prayuth are two of the key figures in Thailand's political rupture.
Thaksin retains a folkloric status among Thailand's rural poor, who put their votes behind his family for recognising their changing aspirations with universal healthcare, village loans, college scholarships and big farming subsidies.
Yet to the establishment, Thaksin is a toxin, accused of using taxpayers' money to fuel his own patronage networks at the expense of the traditional power stems of the monarchy and its allies in the army, bureaucracy and business elite.
Those old powers face a new threat from the snowballing popularity of the Move Forward Party (MFP), who is polling second best after Pheu Thai.
MFP wants to end conscription, break monopolies, cut the army's reach into power and most controversially amend the royal defamation law which shields the monarchy.
In the final week of campaigning, Prayuth has toured the royalist heartlands of the south, warning those who offer big changes are set on tearing apart Thai history and culture.
"Thailand can't be divided," he said from his campaign bus on Monday. "We must be united in order to grow. Love your nation, religion and king."
Prayuth is selling his story of a soldier reluctantly forced to take power to save the nation from chaos and disunity. Yet he says the country remains at risk of instability nine years after he seized power - unless votes go his way.
The electoral system established since his coup means Prayuth has a back door to power, needing just 25 seats under the banner of the United Thai Nation party to be nominated as prime minister.
A slick - but widely derided across social media - campaign video released on Sunday by United Thai Nation portrayed "change" as a threat to the Thai way of life.
The video sets up scenarios of unprotected borders thanks to the end of conscription; children sneering at their elders over dinner and young women selling images of themselves online, while faith and values vanish. It ends with the question "Do you really want Thailand not to be the same?"
"It's a desperate message but that doesn't mean it doesn't work," Voranai Vanijaka a candidate for the centrist Chartpattankla Party told This Week in Asia.
"Older people are truly worried over the oncoming 'apocalypse' ... after years and years of propaganda by the regime and they truly believe the [pro-democracy] opposition will wipe away everything that is good and holy about Thailand."
About 40 per cent of eligible voters are millennials or Gen Z, who tack towards pro-democracy parties and want Prayuth out. But a similar portion are in their late 40s and older, and experts say they are the target base of Prayuth and the other conservative parties.
For Prayuth "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac", Voranai said.
"He doesn't want to give up this power ... he is a hardcore believer in Thailand being the way it has always been and he's not going to step aside and let other people evolve this country."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
