Political Dynasties in Thailand: The Recent Picture after the 2011 General Election

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the patterns of family-based politics in Thailand’s 2011 House of Representatives election. The key question is whether the political dynasty, a sequence of political leaders who are considered members of the same family, is still a determining factor in Thai elections, and if so, to what extent compared to the past. Drawing on a rich set of data collected from election results between 1979 and 2011, this article argues that the political roles and influences of many political dynasties have become more complicated and have tended to increase, although some have experienced defeat in elections. The article finds that while belonging to a political dynasty could give new dynastic faces a better chance of winning a House election in their constituency than their non-dynastic counterparts, the most influential factor for electoral candidates in winning a House of Representatives election is belonging to the Pheu Thai Party or the Democrat Party. This article thus suggests that one of the best ways to avoid the monopoly of one or a few political families in Thai politics is to empower and support party members and eligible voters to meaningfully engage in political parties’ affairs and activities.

Keywords:

• Thailand
• political dynasties
• political families
• Thaksin
• Thai politics

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all those who helped and supported in various stages of this article and research, particularly Charas Suwanmala, Attasit Pankaew, Robert B. Albritton, Kai-Ping Huang, Eugenie Merieau, Theerawat Chuaydam, the Insight Foundation (www.info.or.th) and the anonymous readers for Asian Studies Review.

Notes

1. It should be noted here that the dissolution of the Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT) after the 2006 military coup d’état made the emergence of the People Power Party (PPP) the first generation of Thaksin’s proxy party. The PPP won the 2007 House of Representatives election by a solid margin (233 of the 480 seats) and formed a coalition government with five other minor parties under the premiership of Samak Sundraravej. As a result of the political turmoil that occurred immediately after the PPP proposed a plan to revise the 2007 Constitution in May 2008, Samak was eventually determined by the Constitutional Court to be ineligible to hold office in August 2008. However, because the coalition parties did not reelect Samak to office, Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, was nominated by the PPP and was elected as prime minister by a majority vote in the House of Representatives on 17 September 2008. On the one hand, this occurrence is evidence of the ability of the Shinawatra family to pass power to the following generations. On the other hand and as this paper will discuss in more detail later regarding the effect of the political crisis on political dynasty building during the period under consideration, the ban on the TRT and PPP politicians as a consequence of party dissolutions also increased the incentives for dynasty building, as family members were fielded in the place of banned leaders.

2. More information regarding the roles of Thaksin Shinawatra and his family in Thai politics during the past decade can be found in many studies, such as those of McCargo and Ukrist (2005) and Pasuk and Baker (2009).

3. In the case of the Philippines, if kinship links to local government units are considered, nearly 70 per cent of the district legislators of the 15^th Congress can be categorised as politicians from political dynasties (Mendoza et al., 2012, p. 3).

4. Known for its paternalistic style of ruling, the Khunpleum family, founded by Mr Somchai or Kamnan Poh, who was a long-term mayor of Saen Suk municipality of Chonburi province, is typically described in the Thai media as the family of the “eastern godfather” (Backman, 2004, p. 32; Sombat, 2001, pp. 63–66). This family had dominated certain electorates at both the national and local levels in Chonburi province and other provinces in the eastern region since the early 1990s. Key politicians from the Khunpleum family included Sontaya Khunpleum (Mr Somchai’s son), Minister of Science and Technology (2001–02) and Minister of Tourism and Sports (2002–05) under Thaksin Shinawatra, and Minister of Culture under Yingluck Shinawatra (2011); Wittaya Khunpluem (Mr Somchai’s son), Member of the House of Chonburi province between 1992 and 2006 and currently Head of Chonburi Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO); and Ittipol Khunpluem (Mr Somchai’s son), Member of the House of Chonburi province between 2001 and 2006 and currently Mayor of Pattaya (Whelan & Lidauer, 2011, pp. 55–56). Thus, for many Thai political observers and analysts, the Khunpleum clan’s loss in the 2007 election was a shock that was unimaginable (see their opinions presented in Anucha, 2007, p. 3).

5. The Chaisang family is one of the most successful political families in Chachoengsao province. Many family members were continually elected as House of Representatives members and have held important political positions. The most outstanding member and current leader of the family is Chaturon Chaisang (Mr Anan’s son), who entered Thai politics at the 1986 House of Representatives election with his father’s strong support (Kanokrat, 2012, p. 136). After joining the TRT in 2001, Chaturon supported his younger brother (Wutthipong Chaisang) and younger sister (Thitima Chaisang), who were elected as Members of the House of Chachoengsao province at the 2001 and 2005 elections respectively (for more information on the roles of Chaturon and his family in Thai politics, see Kanokrat, 2012).

6. The Tancharoen family is another successful political family in Chachoengsao province. The first member of this family to serve in Thailand’s House of Representatives was Suchart Tancharoen, who was elected as a Member of the House of Chachoengsao province in 1986 (the same election as Chaturon). Since then, Suchart has been continuously elected 8 times. As a result of the dissolution of TRT in 2007, Suchart was banned from politics for 5 years. He thus supported Pichet Tancharoen, his elder brother, to be elected as a Member of the House of Chachoengsao province in the 2007 election (for more information about the regrouping of the TRT members after its dissolution, see Nelson, 2008, pp. 2–3). After Itti Sirilathayakon, another Member of the House of Chachoengsao province, was banned due to the dissolution of the PPP in 2008, Natchapon Tancharoen, Pichet’s son, was supported by Suchart and Pichet as a candidate in the by-election and became a new Member of the House of Chachoengsao province, replacing Itti (Avudh, 2009, p. 2A).

7. Politicians with a business background did play a role in national politics before 1979, as the study by Nakharin Mektrairat (1991) found that 69 per cent of serving politicians since the 1969 election had a business background. Moreover, in the wake of the democratic period heralded by the 14 October 1973 demonstrations, provincial businessmen started to become involved in politics by cooperating with their networks in establishing their own political parties, such as the Prachatham Party of Chaisiri Raungkarnjaset (businessman in Ubonrachatani province), the holding of the Secretary General position of the Labour Party by Sa-ard Piyawan (businessman from Lampang province), and the establishment of the Pandinthai Party by Sunerat Telan (businesswoman from the central part of the country). The role of politicians with a business background really expanded when they began to enter “big” political parties such as Chartthai and Kitsangkom after the 1979 election.

8. One House of Representatives election was held on 2 April 2006, in which the ruling TRT of Thaksin won a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, partly because the three major opposition parties, the Democrat Party, Chartthai Party and the Mahachon Party, boycotted the election. This election was eventually declared invalid by the Constitutional Court on 8 May 2006 as a result of the finding that the positioning of the voting booths violated voter privacy.

9. According to the electoral results, there were 85 new faces, with 375 seats in total. Thirty-seven of these new faces were dynastic politicians, while 48 were non-dynastic politicians.

10. These amendments resulted in some critical changes to the electoral system. First, the number of members of the House of Representatives increased from 480 to 500. Second, the 500 members of the House under the new system were divided into 375 single-member constituencies and 125 members chosen from a nationwide party-list ballot, instead of 400 members from mostly multiple-member constituencies and 80 party-list members from a total of 8 different provincial groups under the previous system.

11. Currently, the members of the Thienthong family occupy not only all House of Representatives seats in Sakaeo province but also many important positions at the local level, such as Chief Administrator of the PAO, Mayor, and so forth.

12. “Black May” became a common term for the 17–20 May 1992 confrontation between the unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators and the government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon, a leader of the National Peace Keeping Council (NPKC), which conducted a coup d’état on 23 February 1991 that ousted the elected government of Prime Minister Chatichai, who was invited by 5 political parties (the Samakkee Dhamma Party, the Chart Thai Party, the Social Action Party, the Rassadorn Party and the Thai Citizens’ Party) to be prime minister after the general election in March 1992. The bloody military crackdown that followed resulted in 52 officially-confirmed deaths, hundreds of injuries, many disappearances, and more than 3,500 arrests. For more information about the Black May events, see Callahan (1988) and Khien (1997).

13. The block-vote system or the small multi-member constituency system used in Thailand’s House of Representatives elections between 1979 and 1996 was an electoral system in which a province was divided into constituencies, and the number of members of the House of Representatives in each constituency varied from one to three according to the total number of eligible voters in each province (i.e. the ratio was 150,000 eligible voters to one member of the House) (Orathai, 2002, pp. 279–280).

14. See, for example, Anyarat (2010), Nishizaki (2011), Pasuk & Baker (1997), Ockey (2004), Siripan (2006; 2012), Sombat (2001) and Thomson (2013).

15. According to the 1997 Constitution, members of the House of Representatives were elected through a mixed member majoritarian system that combined first-past-the-post constituency voting (400 members) with party-list proportional representation (100 members).

16. The most interesting examples were the recruitment of Narong Wongwan, who controlled large numbers of House of Representatives members in the North, and Sanoh Thienthong, who controlled not only Sakaeo province but also the central and northeast regions (Prajak, 2014, p. 412).

17. See, for example, Matichon (4 December 2008), Matichon Weekly (11 February 2005) and Prachathai (20 July 2011).

18. The proportion of the political dynasty in the Philippines obtained from these authors was calculated by including only a legislator in the 15^th Congress that shared the same last name with at least one other legislator in the 12^th, 13^th, 14^th or 15^th Congresses.