Anatomy: Future Backward.

• Author: McCargo, Duncan

The weeks leading up to the 24 March 2019 elections were a time of excitement; after almost five years of military rule following the 22 May 2014 coup d'etat, Thais were finally free to express themselves politically. Around 51 million people were eligible to vote, while a record total of 80 political parties and 13,310 candidates from across the ideological spectrum were listed on their ballot papers. The polls, which generated immense enthusiasm among Thai voters, were full of sudden twists and dramatic surprises.

The campaign excitement and sense of freedom that preceded the elections proved entirely illusory. The ruling junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), had no real intention of handing over power to an elected parliament: their plan was to craft malleable rules of the electoral game; to create a well-funded political machine that could become a major vote-winner around which to craft a ruling coalition; and to use a range of legal and judicial mechanisms to thwart the aspirations of opposition parties. The NCPO's goal was a new mode of electoral authoritarian rule, in the guise of restoring Thailand to parliamentary democracy.

These elections need to be viewed as three phases: the extensive stage-setting undertaken between May 2014 and March 2019; the February-March election campaign itself; and the convoluted electoral aftermath, culminating in the declarations of the results in May, the re-appointment of General Prayut as prime minister in June, followed finally by the formation of the new cabinet in July.

The main focus of this Roundtable is on the election campaign, but some context on the pre-election phase is required. Both the 1991 and 2006 military coups were accompanied by early promises of elections within a year, and elections did indeed take place after 13 and 15 months respectively. In contrast, the NCPO disdained legal niceties--initially ruling without even announcing an interim constitution, a prime minister or a government--and was distinctly reluctant to specify a timeline for a return to parliamentary governance. Promised elections were delayed six times, and only finally held almost five years after the NCPO seized power. (1) When the junta did agree to set up a constitution-drafting assembly under distinguished jurist Bowornsak Uwanno, the generals were unhappy with the resulting 2015 charter--with its emphasis on conservative notions of citizens' empowerment--and promptly killed it off. (2) The subsequent 2017 Constitution deployed the rarely-used and confusing Multi-Member Apportionment (MMA) electoral system. As Allen Hicken and Bangkok Pundit explained:

Instead of voters casting two separate votes, one for a candidate and one for a party list, under MMA voters will cast a single, fused ballot for a candidate (Section 80). That vote will count as both a vote for the candidate, and simultaneously a vote for that candidate's party for purposes of the party list seats. The total number of votes a party receives nationwide via this single vote will determine the total share of seats a party is entitled to (Section 86). Party list seats will be added to a party's constituency seats until this total is reached (Section 86). (3) In practice, the main effects of MMA were to curb the dominance of large parties and to favour medium-sized ones. Under an additional interim provision, the prime minister was to be selected jointly by the elected lower house and an appointed Senate.

These two changes together had been deliberately crafted to block the long dominant Pheu Thai Party from winning future elections, or determining the premiership. From the outset, the NCPO had been intent upon "restoring national happiness" by ending the decade of political polarization that had culminated in the Shutdown Bangkok anti-government protests of 2013-14. Since 2005, Thais had been caught up in colour-coded antagonisms: the...