Thailand’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms Part III is seeing one camp sailing rudderless and becoming much more vulnerable than the other two.
A few days ago, a leading conservative academic, Seri Wongmontha, insisted that whatever the conservatives’ strategy is, it’s not working. According to him, his ideological camp is a lost cause.
If Thailand’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms Part I ended with the formation of the Srettha government, ironically bringing together former enemies, Part II was about how to maintain the shaky alliance and how the Pheu Thai Party can pull off a big trick of making the isolated People’s Party remain scary but not so threatening.
Isolation gives Pheu Thai the parliamentary strength it wanted. But the party needed to balance that with maintaining its own credibility and popularity. Like the People’s Party, Pheu Thai cannot live without ideology.
In the evolving Part III, both Pheu Thai and the People’s Party are finding their jobs probably easier than expected. The other camp, the conservatives, are all over the place ideologically. Some are with Pheu Thai, a few others are flirting with the People’s Party, and the rest remain extremists.
Simply put, one kingdom is unorganized, disunited and badly confused.
The telltale evidence can be seen in the ongoing Entertainment Complex saga. The extremists are threatening to take to the streets. The moderate ones are yielding to the Pheu Thai Party. Those in the middle could not care less.
After the general election last May, all Pheu Thai wanted was to lead to a coalition government, and all the conservatives needed was to get Move Forward (now the People’s Party) out of the way. The common need to neutralise the election winner was strong.
Politically, Pheu Thai won. Ideologically, it lost. As for the conservatives, they chose a “small loss” over a “big loss”.
The “14th Floor” episode would have the conservatives explode years ago, let alone defending the treatment of Thaksin Shinawatra in unison in Parliament a few weeks ago. Pheu Thai sensed the upper-hand and has been wielding it effectively.
It is teasing the conservatives with the Entertainment Complex idea. If the future of the Pheu Thai-advocated bill remains uncertain, the ruling party has already succeeded in dividing the conservatives like never before.
The following is what Seri describes the conservative parties in the Pheu Thai-led Paetongtarn government: “They have become humble, afraid to question questionable policies and always citing the etiquette of being a coalition partner. They are concerned more about themselves than about national interests.”
The worst, according to Seri, is that some people in conservative parties even help Pheu Thai “defend indefensible policies”.
Seri is practically asking if one of the three kingdoms is morphing into a mere sidekick. Gone are the days of unyielding conservatism even if its parliamentary arm sat in the opposition bloc, he says.
To be fair to the conservative parties, the choices are limited. It has been impossible to effectively advocate their core beliefs without shady help, specifically from Pheu Thai. Problem is that the quid pro quo is getting more outrageous with each passing day.
And that problem is feeding on itself. The more the conservatives accept the outrageous quid pro quo, the weaker they become.
In other words, by accepting things that are not so conservative, the conservatives are becoming less and less useful. They are endangering their own existence.
In other words still, three kingdoms may be becoming two.
“The reds (Pheu Thai fan base) are united, and so are the oranges (the People’s Party and its supporters), but the yellows (conservatives) are horribly splintered,” said a pro-conservative news analysis.
That is not quite right. Some reds have turned orange, but the switch of allegiance doesn’t help strengthen the conservatives.
The article’s explanation of the current situations of the conservative parties is spot on, though.
Bhumjaithai is big but not big enough to upgrade from a “regional party” to a “national” one. United Thai Nation is meek without the presence of the man who was its selling point, Prayut Chan-o-cha. Palang Pracharath has to worry about its own problems rather than national issues, and cannot claim any ideological credit for ending up in the opposition.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are a bunch of bats without any charismatic leader. They can be “birds” one day and “rats” the next. They go according to how the wind blows.
The only good news for the conservatives is that Pheu Thai and the People’s Party have drifted too far apart to be reunited. The People’s Party could never accept Digital Wallet and Entertainment Complex, which they attacked in Parliament, while Pheu Thai wants to control ministries that traditionally belong to the biggest party in the government.
Additionally, the People’s Party has attacked Thaksin Shinawatra, the virtual patriarch of Pheu Thai. The fierce efforts to include his name in a censure motion against his daughter has been imprinted in all Pheu Thai minds.
This hopefully might keep the ironic and fragile political equilibrium for a little while.
It means that if they play their weak hand miraculously with an extremely-good strategy and with some good luck, the conservatives might still be able to keep their relevance. But they will need a hung Parliament after Pheu Thai and the People’s Party fight it out in the next election.
Which, however, also means that, in the next election, it can be a two-party showdown, as the love-hate triangle seems to be disappearing.
