Asian Angle | Will dissolution of Thailand’s Move Forward Party reignite wave of youth-led protests?

Thailand’s youth has been subdued in the wake of a ‘rerun’ of events that previously led to the Future Forward party’s dissolution

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Supporters of the Move Forward Party converge at its headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, on August 7. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 10:30am, 17 Aug 2024

On August 7, the Thai Constitutional Court announced its unanimous decision to dissolve the Move Forward Party (MFP). The last dissolution of a popular progressive party in 2020 kicked off a large youth-led pro-democracy movement that lasted months. However, a similar response this time around seems unlikely.

MFP won both the popular vote and the largest number of seats in the May 2023 general election. Despite this victory, the party was blocked from forming a government. A year after the election, the Constitutional Court ruled that MFP’s campaign policy to amend Thailand’s lèse-majesté law could be construed as undermining the monarchy for political gain and was therefore unconstitutional. This warranted the party’s dissolution, as well as a ban on its executives from politics for 10 years.

This commentary does not analyse the court’s decision or its political implications, but rather aims to point out that a group of actors has been missing from the main political stage in the aftermath of MFP’s dissolution: the Thai youth.

The relatively quiet response from the country’s young people is noteworthy for several reasons. MFP and its former leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, who led the party to victory in 2023, were especially popular among young Thais. More importantly, the dissolution of MFP is largely a rerun of another watershed episode in Thai politics from 2020. MFP’s predecessor, the Future Forward party, was dissolved, and its executive committee members barred from politics, after unexpectedly strong election results. Most of the members of parliament from Future Forward moved to MFP, which became the successor of Future Forward’s progressive policies.

Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, founder of the now-dissolved Future Forward party, at an event in Bangkok in January 2021. Photo: AFP

Yet, a more significant consequence of Future Forward’s dissolution lies beyond party politics. As Future Forward and its leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit were extremely popular among young people, its dissolution was often credited as one of the triggers for the 2020 student-led pro-democracy protests. Indeed, on the night of Future Forward’s dissolution, “flash” rallies were held across various university campuses, which later snowballed into large-scale protests.

So, if this is indeed a rerun, should we expect another round of national protests, perhaps with similar fervour and fiery rhetoric as those from 2020? It seems quite unlikely.