With Thailand’s most recent provincial elections in the books, the youth-led Progressive Movement party failed to win in any of the 41 Thai provinces. The party is the successor to the Future Forward party that was banned due to its radical anti-royalist views.
These new results follow after many months of anti-royalist and pro-democracy protests from Thai youth, which demanded the abolition of the Thai monarchy, a role currently filled by the controversial Maha Vajiralongkorn. This movement, however, obviously failed to gain any traction with the older population, many of whom revere the Thai monarchy with quasi-religious adoration. However, as previously hinted at, part of the reason the progressive movement within Thailand has had such a difficult time rising in popularity is because of its active suppression from the government. Under the Thai constitution’s law about lèse-majesté, public criticism of the King is illegal in almost every circumstance. Accordingly, leaders of the progressive movement within Thailand, most recently with its most previous iteration, the Future Forward Party, have almost no legal avenue to push their anti-royalist ideology, let alone through parliament. In such a situation, the party is depending immensely on a mass social movement, involving more than just the youth, that will force change to the Thai government. As ridiculous as it seems now, this is not all that outlandish considering that the Thai monarchy’s popularity is currently enjoying an all-time low, as Vajiralongkorn’s excessive playboy lifestyle has had a difficult time concording with the majority Buddhist views of the Thai population.