♪ laura: will the pro-democracy opposition take power in thailand? it secured a significant victory in the general election, and promises major reforms. but with the military so powerful, how can it achieve this? this is "inside story." ♪ laura: hello there, i'm laura kyle.

thailand's opposition has won the general elections by a landslide. the question now is whether the military elite will let it govern. the leader of the move forward party is ready to be the next prime minister. but first, the limjaroenrat must form a coalition that can overcome the military-appointed senate. you must win a majority of seats in the upper and lower houses of parliament and push ahead with the group forms promised on the campaign trail. we will explore these issues. but first this report from our correspondent. reporter: voters in thailand have overwhelmingly backed the opposition, rejecting years of status quo in government. now the head of the progressive move forward party could be the country's a new leader. >> i am ready to be the prime minister for all, whether you agree with me or you disagree with me. reporter: but for that to happen, there is yet another vertical hurdle.

a -- is yet another political hurdle. a major bloc in the senate is appointed by the military, and it also gets a say on who becomes prime minister and who leads any new government. the opposition has a newly formed coalition, most notably with the few type party. -- most notably with the pheu thai party. the alliance must now strike a deal to win over some of these gentle-backed politicians. frustration had been brewing well before the election. thousands of protests broke out in 2020, with demonstrators openly criticizing the monarchy , and demanding prime minister prayuth chan-ocha stepp down. now, the general who led the country after seizing power in a 2014 military coup, has acknowledged defeat. >> for now it is about a transition and the formation of a government. all ties should love each other and be united for the country without conflict. reporter: thailand is the

second-largest economy in southeast asia after indonesia. rising inflation and the youth vote played a major role in the election results. >> we were all hoping the government would move the economy forward. right now to earn even $10 is challenging if i sell coffee for half a day. the economy is bad. >> i feel the election results carry a new meaning that could bring about even more changes. i hope good things will be happening in thailand. reporter: with a political shift in politics, ireland must now wait to see if any government will also reflect a new direction. ♪ laura: ok. let's get into the discussion now and join our guest, all from bangkok. parit wacharasinghu is policy campaign manager for the move forward party and an mp elect in the thai government. punchada sirivunnabood is a

specialist in thai politics, and associate professor at mahidol university. and sean boonpracong is a political analyst and former national security adviser to the then-prime minister yingluck shinawatra. very warm welcome to you. parit, first of all, congratulations on your win. it has sent shockwaves through thailand. how are you feeling about it? guest: thank you very much. the election results were beyond our internal expectations. what it demonstrates is a clear demand for change that thai people want to see. if you look beyond just the results of move forward party, you will realize that there are only two parties that were able to get more than 100 seats. only two parties got support from more than 10 million voters, the move forward party and the pheu thai party, both of

which were on the opposition side of the political spectrum over the past four years. i think it demonstrates a clear demand for change from the thai people. we are trying to push forming a government that can push reforms across critical, economic and social issues. laura: we will look at how easy, or difficult, that will be in a moment. sean, for the first time -- put tightly have come second in this election but it is -- put type . heu thai -- pheu thai came second in this election. but it is the first time it has lost the popular vote. has the domestic lost its shine? guest: i would caution this even , but i want to congratulate the move forward party for the victory. in terms of numbers, the pheu

thai party leads -- the move forward party leads to thai by a substantial margin. both of us have been allies. we may have some differences that we also want to move the country forward. and pheu thai want to work with and give the move forward party a chance to form a government and we will refrain from doing anything beyond what is the political courtesy and wait for that. however, we also know that with our coalition, the party of move forward only has 310 votes. in order to be prime minister, it requires 376 votes. the steps we have to go through before that day, there is a political timetable here.

it will be certified in around 60 days, the official results. then there is a process to elect the house speaker. would be the prime minister. and so far, move forward has to work hard to recruit more members or even appeal to the appointed senate. laura: can this coalition nor more people to join it, to reach -- lure more people to join it, to reach that number where it can form its own government and choose its own leader? guest: well, first, good evening from bangkok and congratulations to parit. there is a lot of criticism on

this. everyone who works for the move forward party want move forward to join the coalition government and to become the prime minister. the party leaders of move forward are supposed to be the prime minister. but it is a difficult time because you know in thailand, in other media channels, a lot of senators have already given interviews for a lot of media that they will not vote to support move forward to become the prime minister and also to form the coalition government. so at this time, even though pheu thai has agreed that they will support move forward to join the coalition government, it is still not guaranteed whether or not move forward can get 376 votes. it is a really important number that move forward has to fight for. so far, it seems like move forward expects the senate to support them, which for me i think is a bit difficult.

we have to wait and see whether or not move forward can form a coalition to nominate the prime minister with the 376 seats. laura: ok. so, parit, we heard from the move forward leader, pita limjaroenrat. he almost defied the people to come forward. but is it an unrealistic request to get the military-backed members of the senate to switch allegiance? guest: i don't think it is an unrealistic request. we always reiterate that giving in military-appointed senate the power to work for a prime minister is undemocratic in nature. but these are two important numbers. the first is the 300 76 which is basically 50% of the joint houses of parliament to get elected prime minister.

the second number is 250, which is a target for actually managing the government, because once you form a government, any vote on laws, any vote on the budget or any votes on no-confidence actually do not involve the senate. so in that sense, even though the 250 senators could theoretically book a prime minister that demands a majority of the lower house in the vote for prime minister, i don't see the point of doing that. that prime minister cannot actually govern or pass any bills or any budget and will get put down in no confidence straightaway. to speak in numbers, the set of parties that we are planning to form a coalition with get us to 310. the question is why is the other 60 going to come from? the first source is actually senators. we saw senators who came out and spoke against voting for the move forward prime minister.

they do not represent the viewpoint of all senators. we are seeing more and more senators coming out saying that they will back move forward-led coalition not because they particularly like move forward, but they want to abide by democratic rules that they should support a set of parties that can command more than half of the lower house. the second source of support is from other parties not in the coalition but given in the special circumstance, they might vote for a move forward-led coalition even though they will not be part of the government. laura: said there is optimism that the party can move forward and former government. also questioning why the military would put a weak leader in place in charge of a minority government. but from your experience with

the pheu thai party, that has happened before. in 2019, pheu thai won the popular vote but didn't get to rule the country. a new leader was put in place by the military. guest: i see this as a peculiarity of of this constitution. it it was written to retain the advantage of the military incumbent. therefore, in order to move the country forward, there has two be some sort of compromise among the appointed senators, and like parit said, they have made some gestures to get the country moving forward. i would not lose that much hope. we have to take some steps. it is time. and the mood of the country, to me, the senate is in a bit of a lame-duck. they have one year left to go. and if move forward talked to

them nicely, they could produce a result that can be surprising, but then we are in a situation that is kind of unknown here. i don't want to go out on a limb and say that move forward will succeed, but this is a situation where we have 60 days for this to happen. there is plenty of maneuvering in thai politics. there is a lot of dark arts. the has been is abstention of underneath the table moving. but they have to certify this. in the near future, nobody knows, let's hope that move forward could form a government since they won. laura: punchada let's look at the election commission. it has 60 days to certify the

results. the election commission is part of the establishment, a powerful conservative establishment which controls largely the courts, the election commission, and has many tools at its disposal to retain the status quo. so what are the chances that the election commission is actually going to certify these results? guest: well, a lot of people criticize the election commission of thailand since the 2019 election and also this election as well. but i think this time is better than the last election because a lot of people, social media and online media are trying to observe the election commission and how they handled these elections and the election commission, i think they will prolong the results of the election this time. it is going to take 60 days and after that, we can see the

coalition government. if the people in thailand, especially the young generation involved in politics like this keep doing this, until we find out who will be the coalition government, if you observe how the election commission handled this investigation and they will investigate anything that went wrong with the election as well. laura: there are some big reforms on the reform agenda, parit. guest: let me give you two sources of hope. the situation is different between 2019 and the current election because this time around, move forward and pheu thai together, when you add the numbers, they form more than half of the mp's in the lower house. this was not the case back in 2019, which then allowed the senate to have an excuse to vote and retain general power. this time is different. the second part is that across

the past three years there have been at least 60 senators who voted in agreement with abolishing the power to vote for who becomes prime minister. even though that didn't pass with a majority of senators, there were at least 60 who were opposed to them having this power to elect who becomes prime minister. so we are hopeful that these 60 senators will retain what they had voted for previously as well. to your question on our agenda, we have 300 policies were introduced and communicated with the voters before the election. so of course in a coalition government, there will have to be conversations about how much that is in line with the other coalition parties. we will try to push ahead as many of our policies as possible and that includes things like democratization, demilitarization, our agenda to fde-centralized power from the

federal government, reduce inequality an expansion of , welfare state, as well as reforms of the education system and the civil service. they are all important. we are in conversations with other coalition partners about what should be the joint agenda of the coalition government. laura: sean demilitarization. , is the military in thailand ready to relinquish power? guest: well, apparently this is the joint policy platform of both pheu thai and move forward, is to make the military to get rid of the draft. so that it would be a volunteer army, just like the united states. ward that i have heard -- word that i have heard is that the head of pheu thai one still take over two key ministries.

one is the military of defense and the other is education. part of his political reform is to push through this volunteer army. the issue concerning the nation is more than just reform alone. but the economic malaise that thailand faced for the past eight years, the last two years especially with covid, thai people are in really bad shape. this new coalition government must focus on economic priorities as pheu thai has put forward. not as much clearer as from the move forward view, but we hope they can put this priority. laura: ok, parit, is that going

to be the number one parity, the economy? guest: the economy is the first priority. i may have to respectfully disagree with the earlier statement that we have not been clear on our economic policies. we announced not just the 300 policies we wanted to do across the four-year term, we also presented a 100 day roadmap which included economic initiatives. whether it is reducing electricity bills, introducing a new program that allows for smes to be able to compete more against big businesses, as well as increasing minimum wage to $455 a day within the first hundred days, amending the law to ensure that minimum wage goes up each year based on inflation and economic growth. so i have to disagree with the assumption that move forward party's agenda is not focused on economic priorities.

. we are trying to say that solving the economic issues as well as doing the necessary reforms of various political institutions and civil service education can be done in parallel, and that is what we will do. laura: and i am short many of those more detailed conversations will be happening in the coming days and weeks between the coalition partners. punchada i want to get back to this issue on the military. there is a lot of hope that it will relinquish power. looking at history, it has a huge amount of power in thailand. there have been many military coups in its history what it hasn't gone the way of the military. we talked about demilitarization. removing the draft is one thing, but what about removing the military from politics? is it ready to withdraw? guest: most of the political party and even the young generation want the military out of politics. but in practice, i think it is a

little bit hard, because they are supporting the conservative side. to get them out from the politics, there should be a really slow, continuous process and it has to take some time. this election, i think, is very clear that most of the people in thailand don't want to be working in politics anymore. as a result of the elections, the two major promilitary parties gained a little numbers from both. prime minister chan-ocha needs to stop being in politics, as you can see today, one of his colleagues, one former minister pointed out that the prime minister prayuth chan-ocha may stop and shouldn't be involved in politics anymore. but we don't really know how it is going to be like.

it depends how the coalition government is going to be like. if move forward can really form a coalition government and pheu thai cannot be the prime minister, and let pheu thai lead the coalition government and become the prime minister, that is the second option that a lot of people are talking about, that pheu thai might join the promilitary political parties to form the coalition government. so at this time, i think pheu thai is a really important factor, whether they will join move forward to join a coalition government. i hope it is going to happen, but if not, there is another option, that pheu thai will form a coalition with other political parties. laura: sean, what is the chance that pheu thai will abandon the move forward party and join the promilitary parties? guest: today that pheu thai

party has come out and said they will play by the political rules which allowed move forward to be the first to form this government. and without using the military parties. i have to abide by that reasoning. but of course, there's always a lot of scenarios. a lot of things can happen in 60 days before the first session of the house. there could be a lot of political maneuvering. and if the senate rejected -- if move forward got short numbers for some reason in negotiation to get the so-called 60 possible independent senators to side with them, is such an unknown future that i can't comment upon. and thailand being a difficult

situation politically for a long time, in terms of not having a constitutional election. so outsiders are watching -- all sides are watching each other very well. we have to see what happened. -- we have to see what will happen. laura: parit a major part of the move forward party's agenda was to amend some laws. pita has vowed to go along with that. is he not worried that he will suffer the same fate as the former move forward leader and be charged under section 112, which charges under criticism of the monarchy? guest: i will reconfirm that amending article 112 is one of over 300 policies that we will push ahead. i think we are not afraid that

will put us in a position whereby every leader will be charged under section 112 because we know that what we're doing is a proposal to amend a law and a criminal code which is normal to do. we have been very clear with the public about which problems we want to fix and how we want to amend the law. we will not be the only party as well in the parliament that will support amendment of this law. we will not be isolated in this agenda. laura: punchada, they were even talking about les majeste laws as a huge change in thailand. the country is undergoing massive change and is about to enter a big period of uncertainty, isn't it? guest: well, at this time, because of the move forward winning the election, there will be a lot of change. the process to change this,

especially article i 12, is really difficult. even if move forward can submit this to the parliament because they have enough numbers, there is another process to go through . it has to be approved by the senate as well. so i think it is difficult to change article i 12 even though they want to amend it. everyone in thailand, especially the young generation, has requested this a long time. but we have to wait and see whether -- how this will happen and how move forward will amend this and how other political parties, whether or not they will support move forward on changing this article 112. laura: laura: absolutely. i believe we will be revisiting this story a fair amount over the next 60 days, the next couple of months. many thanks today to our guests for joining us for a very interesting discussion. parit wacharasinghu, punchada sirivunnabood and sean boonpracong. and thank you, too, for watching. you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website, aljazeera.com.

and for further discussion, do go to our facebook page. that is facebook.com/aj inside insidestory. you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, laura kyle, and the whole team here, it is bye, for now. ♪

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