laura: thaksin shinawatra returns home. thailand's former leader, back from exile, was immediately detained. he supports the new government, which is backed by the military that ousted him. the winners of the election are out in the cold. so, what next for thailand? this is "inside story." ♪ hello there, and welcome to the program. i'm laura kyle. thailand's democracy enters another phase just as a towering

political figure from its past returns from exile. thaksin shinawatra was west from the airport to prison to start serving an eight-year sentence but there's strong speculation that he and his pheu thai party have an arrangement with the powerful military for his return and for the formation of a new government. meanwhile, the move forward party, which won may's election, is sidelined. thailand's democracy has been fragile, with governments overthrown by the generals who remain in overall control. we'll be picking through what all this means for thailand in a moment with our guests, but first, here's tony chang in bangkok with more on what people think of the latest political maneuvers. reporter: it's been a dramatic 24 hours in thailand. thaksin shinawatra, the former prime minister who'd been in self-imposed exile for 15 years, but arguably the most influential figure in thai politics for more than two decades, returned. he was met at the airport by a huge crowd, but then whisked away by the police to the

supreme court and then on to jail to start an eight-year term. but then in the middle of the night, taken to hospital with medical complications. and while all of that was going on, thailand got a new prime minister after four months of political deadlock. representing the pheu thai political party, he came second in the general election. he'll now form a coalition government. but in order to do that, he's going to have to join with three parties allied to the military, part of the last administration. and the big picture is, thai voters voted overwhelmingly for reform and for change. move forward, the party that won the election, has been shoved out of the side and pheu thai in this coalition government is going to find it very hard to create any real reform. how much are the frustrations of those voters is going to spill out onto the streets as they have in the past? and will thaksin shinawatra, who has been such a divisive figure in the past, prove to be a peacemaker or a troublemaker?

tony chang, for "inside story," bangkok. ♪ laura: joining us now are our guests. in bangkok, punchada sirivunnabood, a specialist on thailand's electoral system and an associate professor at mahidol university. in singapore is duncan mccargo, professor of public policy and global affairs at nanyang technological university, he's the co-author of "the taxonization of thailand." and also in bangkok is kasit piromya, a former foreign minister of thailand. he's a democratic party politician and a former yellow shirts activist. a very warm welcome to all of you. kasit, let's start with you. it's no coincidence, is it, that thaksin has returned home on the same day that his party's nominee for prime minister won the vote in parliament.

was there a deal between pheu thai and the military which as well you know are two traditional enemies? >> as a result of the national elections on the 14th of may, the move forward unexpectedly and beyond expectation and so on had won 14 million votes. unprecedented, unexpected. and the party had defeated every other political party, especially the established political party like the pheu thai under the leadership of the former prime minister as well as the established parties backed by a couple of generals who staged the coup d'etat in 2014. and the move forward has been coming out with a policy campaign and platform to bring about drastic changes and transformation of the kingdom of thailand to become more

democratic. laura: i'm just going to jump in there, because we do know all of this from the outcome of the election, but what we want to know is how thaksin managed to come back home on the same day that his party the pheu thai party was able to put in power their nominee for prime minister by forming a coalition with two pro-military parties, the military of course having ousted him some -- over 10 years ago before, 20 years ago before. >> i think that there have been a lot of behind the scene negotiations between thaksin and the military establishment and the conservative elements in thailand. laura: but that's really interesting, isn't it? because these two, the military and pheu thai are traditional enemies within the thai political sphere. >> but now, they have a more what you call dangerous common enemy in the name of the forward party that wanted to bring about changes.

and thaksin or the military generals and so on, they are conservative. they don't want to see change. they want to see the status quo. so, in that sense, the circumstances have forced them to come together as part of the bigger establishment and to oppose -- to deter any changes that would make thailand, the kingdom, a more democratic one and more open more participatory. laura: this is a real c change for thailand, isn't it? the pheu thai and the military joining forces, at least to secure the return of thaksin and to stay in power, does this mean that pheu thai has become part of the establishment? >> well, yes, this is really clear. they leave move forward behind to be an opposition party, this is not a good thing for pheu

thai itself. in the next election, the pheu thai will face a lot of problem in the election campaigns and also election results. because most of the pheu thai supporters want pheu thai to be a leader and the prime minister and former government together with the move forward. this is a form of democratic side. i think they are disappointing that pheu thai party now switching to form with the pro-military government. so then that's why as you mentioned earlier, there's a pheu thai party and the two military parties, they try to form together in order to bring thaksin back and at the same time the two military political parties continue to maintain their power in the coalition government and then they continue to rule thailand once again. laura: duncan, we've been here before, haven't we, in thailand, the losing party getting to rule the winning party sidelined, except normally the losing party or in every election since 2001 the losing party's been pheu thai. >> yeah, i wish i could say that

thailand is usually well known for honoring election results in a thoroughly democratic manner, but what we've often found in the past is that the election result is one thing and the outcome is quite another. for example, in the last election in 2019, things didn't turn out exactly as planned, the pro-military site didn't get the kind of edge that they wanted in the parliament, and lo and behold, the election commission disappeared behind closed doors, recalculated the method of allocating party list seats, gave out a few seats to some small micro parties that no one expected to be in the parliament, and then lo and behold, the pro-military conservative side was able to form a coalition and run the country for the next four years. so not so many people were aware of that kind of behind-the-scenes maneuver, but this time, with the extremely obvious machinations of the senate to block the move forward leader from becoming prime minister, it's just really rather too crude for all older people's taste. -- for a lot of people's taste.

they're confronted with the reality that their votes are not necessarily the determining factor in who's actually going to form the government, and that of course it's true that there's a common enemy and move forward became a very clear common enemy when this extremely strong showing appeared, but many people believe and we started hearing as early as february or before that there was already an understanding between thaksin specifically himself and the leaders of those pro-military parties. and with thaksin, it's not just about pheu thai, it's really about him and his own overwhelming desire to return to thailand for his own purposes. and he's quite ready to sacrifice the electoral -- the future electoral interests of this party for his own personal gain. laura: kasit, what do you think thaksin's own purposes are? why has he come back now? >> well, i think he's getting

old, he's 74 years old, he wanted to come back, and now there is an opening, because he was able to reach out to the military establishment and make a deal, so he succeeded in making the deal for himself, and i think he was eager enough to discard the mass support and so on. laura: but why? to what end did he make this deal to come back? >> well, i think it's a personal wish and so on. and secondly is that he thinks once his party is in the government, they can recoup the situation to populist policy measures and so on. so it's risk taking with the hope that they could recover later and overcome i think the formidable challenges forthcoming from the move forward. laura: punchada, do you think we're going to see tax in behind -- thaksin behind bars for any

length of time? he's supposed to be serving eight years. i think he only served a couple of hours before he was whisked out and put into hospital, which our correspondent noted was rather strange, given he looked perfectly healthy when he arrived at the airport just a few hours earlier. part of this deal is that he is going to walk free? >> well, yes, you know, thaksin is not the first person, big person in jail. doing this kind of story, moving from the jail to hospital, and then just disappeared, this is not the first time. when he came back this time, he still plays a role in politics behind the scenes. even though he appoints his own people and pheu thai becomes the government, but all of his family and he himself said that he doesn't want to be involved in politics anymore. but you can see how they form the coalition government and how he tried to put his daughter to become the pheu thai nomination

as a prime minister or this kind of thing. it's always about himself. it's not about political party. it's not about pheu thai and it's not about the thai people. also this coalition government will be a hard time to rule the country. and especially in the next election. pheu thai will face a lot of trouble in the next election as well. some even say that they have a high potential that pheu thai fell apart. they might support pheu thai in the following elections. so i think this kind of move of thaksin shinawatra and the full-time party will make the party itself and thaksin and his family have a hard time to survive in the thai politics especially to win the next election. laura: duncan, do you agree with that?

because we know that pheu thai lost a lot of its votes to the move forward party. but now it is in government and it's got the support of the military behind it. that's a pretty powerful force, as we've seen, in thai politics. do you think we're going to be seeing pheu thai serving out the whole term? >> that is very unclear, because we could be entering a period of instability. there are all kinds of things likely to happen over the next couple of years. for example, the change in the current rule that allows the senate to have a kind of veto through the parliamentary vote on who gets to be prime minister. that expires in may of next year. so the possibility for some reorganization of the ruling coalition is very much there. it's not clear whether this government is really likely to be able to go to term. i mean, one of the big questions with a party like pheu thai is why do people vote for it? and, you know, as in other countries, people vote for parties for a variety of reasons. they don't only vote for parties because they support their

policies and they think that they're behaving sensibly and doing the right thing for the country. so pheu thai does have very strong local power networks with their mps who can deliver votes on the ground to some extent, irrespective of the performance of the party. so pheu thai may be able to continue mobilizing some votes in their traditional heartlands in the north and northeast. but what we saw in this last election was an incredible erosion of those old modes of doing politics. so what's really interesting now and, it's scaring not just pheu thai but all of the other sort of traditional parties as well. is, has the electoral gain changed? is it much less about local power networks and influence and use of influence and money, and how much more is it about bigger ideas and questions and ways that the party presents itself ideologically? because their pheu thai is in trouble, it's being hammered by move forward and could be hammered by other parties that take up the mantle of a more progressive realm in the future.

laura: and as we saw in the last election, the thai people have spoken. they are after a more progressive form of politics. the only thing that's stopping them kasit peronia is the military, when its power and its grip and power as duncan said in may next year use its grip on the senate. do you think it's taken a gamble by getting into bed with pheu thai? because pheu thai as we know is the traditional enemy of the military, and will it be seeking to change the constitution to try and lessen the military's power? >> well, i think that the retired generals who i think control two political parties, they are no longer active military personnel, and i don't think that they still retain much influence inside the military establishment. so, in that sense, they have to cling on to the political arena. and by i think associating themselves with the pheu thai and with thaksin and so on, it

also prolongs their political life and influence in the affairs of the kingdom. as to the ability to establish itself at the moment, they can sit tight because of the fact that the move forward wishes to reform drastically, the military establishment now will no longer take place because i suspect that that is already the understanding and the agreement between the military establishment and thaksin and the pheu thai not to touch the reform question of the military as a whole so, that's a give and take and so on going on. but let me go back one thing about thaksin shinawatra. he is also waiting for the amnesty to be submitted to his majesty, the king, so he's waiting for the pardon also. so in that sense, the eight years term, the jail term will not we will become valid for him. so he hopes on that one and there may be some sort of an understanding that the petition would be submitted to his

majesty the king to be for thaksin to be given the amnesty, the pardon and so on. and having known takshin for a few years, a long time back, i don't think that he will give up any ambition about running the country. he will not give up politics. and once he become a free man, he will i think renew his ambition to lead thailand into the future. laura: very interesting. >> one at a time and so on. he is a man who takes risks. one step, then i go for the next step. laura: if that is the case, what do you think will be the reaction? kasit, i ask you specifically because you are a former yellow shirts activist, and you were involved in -- you were very vocal against thaksin when he did win the election you were trying to unseat his party in 2008, you even supported a siege of the airport it was a very tumultuous time during thai politics. will thailand let takshin return?

>> i think the equation of thai political arena has changed now. before, it was competition among the conservative factions in the thai politics. but now, it is between the conservative elements of the thai politics, the establishment versus the progressive forces of the masses of the thai people led by the move forward party. so it's between the elite and the mass. it is no longer the struggle and the infighting inside the military, inside the conservative establishment, which takshin was one of the establishment from the very beginning, but he wanted to monopolize the establishment. that's why he was opposed and finally kicked out. but now he had come back to i think shake hands with him because of the more formidable challenges forthcoming from the progressive forces of thailand.

laura: i mean, it was interesting, wasn't it, when takshin arrived, he made a great show of kneeling before the portrait of the king. this is a king who strips thaksin of his royal honors just a few years ago because he was so horrified by the charges of corruption against him. i mean, again, it just seems to be a constant ebb of flow of people in the thai establishment, in thai politics, is thaksin now very pro-monarchy? >> well, if you look at how he acts and how he plans, we can see now he turned to be like pro conservative and pro monarchy. not only this even when he get back into thailand, if you look at the news all the time in the past couple years, his family have been visiting the palace and the king is on the news sometimes and we can see that.

before the day he arrived, our friends, they had been chit chat by the former politicians -- he came to the airport and then set up everything. set up everything to make sure that when he came out of the airport, he can pay respect to the king's picture. that's why a lot of thai people criticize thaksin's ideology. he turned to be pro monarchy. and maybe thrown to be a part of the conservative side. we are having the political conflict, not the same pattern anymore, not the red shirt and the yellow shirt. but it's turned to be the conservative led by the military and pheu thai may be included in it and also the democratic side which is going to be the move forward party. laura: duncan, do you think we're going to see another color

shirt rise up? because thai people, they maybe stymied at the ballot box, but they're certainly vocal when they don't get their voices heard at the ballot box. do you think -- i mean, i'm quite surprised that we haven't seen more protests so far from all the people who voted for move forward. it seems to be quite quiet on that front. >> yes, because the new color is orange, and orange is a blend of yellow and red, and that's the color of the move forward party, and it's a precursor. of the future forward party. we did have large-scale protests mostly led by students and younger people in the second half of 2020 which were extremely extensive, people tend to focus on a small number of them in bangkok but in fact there were hundreds of them all over the country. so we saw that protests could be mobilized quite rapidly by groups of people who were not necessarily aligned with either the old yellow or red factions. but that was three years ago. many of the leaders of that movement are no longer in a position to to do what they did

before. they faced legal charges, they'd been harassed, they've found it very, very difficult to function in the years that followed. so it's difficult to see exactly where a large mass of people would come from to be mobilized. but we've also got to say that if we look at the previous protests, including the pdrc protests in 2013-2014 against the england government, these protests can come out of nowhere. it can seem that there really aren't very many people who are furious enough to take to the streets, and then they pop up. so i think it's very difficult to predict anything about thai politics, but it's particularly difficult to predict whether there is the potential and capacity for a new mobilization of street politics. because those phenomenon can happen very suddenly. it can only take a matter of days or weeks for a new movement to start to emerge. and typically when it does emerge, it doesn't take the exact same form as its immediate

precursors. so we could be in for something new. but it's unlikely to be exactly what we've seen before. laura: yeah, that's very interesting. kasit, i should note we did invite a member of the move forward party to come on to this discussion, but we didn't hear a response, which we felt was quite unusual, because they have come on and they've spoken before at length. i wonder why they are stepping back from the spotlight. what role are they going to take now and what are their followers going to do next? >> i think they are taking stock of the situation. you're not looking at the formation of the new cabinet who are the ministers and so on. but overall, there are seats of -- seeds of discontentment going on in the thai society. it awaits only a few sparks or

something to happen, then there will be more rallies on the street and so on. and second is that the former leader of the move forward party in particular, will he take the lead in the extra parliamentary activities or not? he has been on and off on the street, behind the scenes, in front of the scene, will he take the mantle of the leadership to i think push forward the democratization process of thailand, the changes of the to have a new constitution and so on? all of this i think. things are happening very fast, but i think one has to be a bit patient to see what what will happen. but i think that's the general feeling, that there will be some more protests who will lead and all of this and so on, because there are a lot of things that the people do not like. the denial of the 14 million votes, the treatment, the special treatment to takshin and so on.

as if that he is not an ordinary prisoner and all of this and so on. and all the excuses that have come. i think it hurts people, and i think it makes the people feel that all of these politicians and bureaucrats looking at the people, that they are the naive -- in the thai saying, yes, we are not buffaloes, but i think so far the thai people have been treated like buffaloes, and that is the seed of discontentment that will crop up inevitably. maybe not at this moment, but i think it will come up in the days to come. laura: punchada, he says things happening fast at the moment but change is certainly slow to come to thailand. when do you think the people's vote will be honored? when will democracy rule? >> yeah, before i answer this,

can i add a little more that i -- that actually move forward is not quiet. if you look at social media, they are very active a lot on tiktok, instagram, on facebook and twitter. i think when you called them, they were busy for the voting session. they plan ahead. i think they already planned what they are going to do. for thailand, the next election is really important. i think move forward have a high potential to win the landslide because people are upset at what is going on. i had a chance to discuss this with a move forward mp. laura: duncan, just in the

minute we've got left, do you think the next election in thailand will be honored? >> well, i'd certainly like to think so. it's going to get more and more difficult, but of course, move forward has a number of problems, one of which is that they could even be dissolved and have to reinvent themselves, and the whole political landscape will have changed. so of course if there was an election right now, it feels like move forward would win in a landslide, but it's really difficult to predict how things could unfold over the next year or so. we could be in a very, very different situation before too long, because it's so dynamic at the moment. laura: it certainly is. we can never say that thai politics is boring. many thanks to all our guests today for joining us. punchada sirivunnabood, duncan mccargo, and kasit piromya. and thank you, too, for watching. you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website. that's aljazeera.com. for further discussion, do go to our facebook page, that's facebook.com/ajinside story. -- facebook.com/ajinsidestory.

you can also join the conversation on x, formerly known as twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, laura kyle, and the whole team here, it's bye for now. ♪

[music playing] artbound was made possible in part by the los angeles county arts commission, department of cultural affairs, city los angeles, boeing, the california endowment, the california humanities, the national endowment for the arts. and the james irvine foundation.