Thailand in 2022: The Land of Broken Smiles

Summary

The year 2022, dominated by intensifying fears of a global recession and armed conflict between major powers, was difficult enough for a healthy government to navigate, but the governing Thai coalition was nowhere near healthy. Generalturned– prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who was initially greeted with a wave of enthusiasm after staging a bloodless coup in 2014 and was re-elected after the 2019 general election, had become immensely unpopular for a combination of reasons: his snappish public persona, his failures to implement meaningful reforms and bridge the political divide, his weak economic performance, and his favouritism of powerful family conglomerates. With the end of the four-year parliamentary term drawing near, infighting within the crowded eighteen-party coalition that Prayut led and inside the military grew more palpable. These developments, coupled with the controversy around Prayut's tenure, fuelled never-ending talk about a House dissolution, a snap election, and even a counter-coup.

In late August, Thailand's Constitutional Court suspended Prayut from office after opposition lawmakers filed a petition asking whether Prayut, who ascended to the premiership in 2014, had violated the eight-year constitutional term limit. The suspension only lasted five weeks. Prayut returned to take the helm in early October on the grounds that the eight-year term limit dictated by the current constitution came into force only in 2017, meaning that the countdown clock must start ticking from that point onwards. The final green light from the Constitutional Court, ruling in favour of the regime and granting Prayut roughly two more years of eligibility for the premiership, was more or less predictable. What was uncertain, however, was the extent of public opposition. Polls indicated that much of the Thai public wanted Prayut out right away, and this popular frustration threatened to spill over because of the court's seemingly biased ruling and the waves of anti-government protest in other countries.

The rocky governing coalition eventually managed to survive and host this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leader's Meeting in Bangkok on 18 and 19 November without popular domestic resistance.