It looks really bad for Thaksin – and not merely because of the number of seats the alliance of Peua Thai and Pracharaj was able to win in yesterday’s by-election. Considering Newin’s defection, retaining 10 of the PPP’s old 13 seats is not a terrible result. Nor should the performance of the competition be considered much of a setback. Chat Thai Pattana basically held steady. The Democrat Party performed well in Central Thailand as well as the North, netting 7 additional seats. But the Democrats are no more a national party today than they were in 2007. And their victory in constituencies where DP candidates had placed respectably in the past reflects a modicum a good will towards Abhisit (in the wake of his rise to Prime Minister) that may or may not hold as his government tackles the many difficult problems Thailand faces today.

No, the opposition is in deep trouble for reasons that transcend the sheer number of seats it won or lost.

It should be kept in mind that Peua Thai’s rivals are not the Democrats, the Friends of Newin, or Chat Thai Pattana. Its main competition for political power are groups and institutions that do NOT participate in elections – the Privy  Council, the military, and Bangkok’s blue-blooded elites. Given how effective these groups/institutions have been in the past months as they endeavored to dislodge the PPP from power, Peua Thai did not merely need to “hold” or pick up some seats. It needed a landslide that would show these institutions where the prachachon really stands. That’s why I noted in my pre-election preview that a satisfactory result for PTP would be 20+ seats. It was never about weakening the governing coalition by a couple of seats. It was about showing defectors that the people resented them. It was about showing powerful unelected institutions that the people would no longer take it lying down.

The by-elections, instead, signaled in no uncertain terms that any outrage against the military, the Privy Council, and the PAD is highly contained within a relatively small number of voters in a small number of provinces. Aside from the good result of the Democrats, who benefited from their enhanced national role, the majority of voters in the Northeast and Central Thailand simply went with local notables. Peua Thai and Pracharaj did well in Isan, but they actually lost (badly) old Thai Rak Thai bastions like Buriram 4, Ubon 2, and Ubon 3. Meanwhile, the well-oiled machines that are the Chart Thai Pattana’s or the Friends of Newin’s old patronage networks did quite well.

Back in the old days when the boss was in power, Thaksin was able to establish Thai Rak Thai as a force greater than the sum of its personalities. TRT soundly defeated local notabilities who didn’t sign on, to the point that even generally non-partisan local elections saw stiff competition to use the TRT’s label. Peua Thai is no longer able to do this. It seems powerless against its defectors – Newin’s faction, Peua Paendin, and Chat Thai Pattana paid no price for their betrayal. And it is itself much more dependent on its own factions and local notables to win seats, even in supposed strongholds. Simply put, the brand is badly damaged. Even the fact that the 10 seats won by the opposition are now shared between Peua Thai and Pracharaj (as opposed to being under the control of a single party) does not bode well for the cohesion of the coalition Thaksin built (or what’s left of it, anyway). Things are unravelling – back to a time when Thai political parties counted much less than the factions and local politicians within their ranks.

There are at least two  profound ironies in all this. The first is that institutions supposedly charged with serving and protecting  the country basically held a gun to the head of the Thai people, telling them that so long as they didn’t vote the way Prem and Anupong wanted the PAD could hold the entire nation hostage with impunity. The people responded by choosing the path of least resistance, meekly acquiescing to the poo yai’s implicit, but transparent enough commands. The other irony is that while Prem, the military, and the PAD grounded their opposition to Thaksin in their abhorrence of patronage, vote buying and corruption, the renewed salience of factions and local notables at the expense of political parties will make patronage, corruption, and vote-buying even more central to future election campaigns. We heard not a peep out of any of them when the Friends of Newin were bought, in bulk, into joining Abhisit’s government. Indeed, Prem and Anupong at least facilitated, if not directly orchestrated, the entire transaction. 

Unfortunately, this sordid affair speaks to more than just Prem’s and Anupong’s hypocrisy (they only abhor corruption when it benefits people they don’t like). It speaks rather to their agenda and strategy. It is quite apparent, in particular, that the military and the Privy Council have no interest in ruling the country directly – in such a way, that is, that they can be held accountable for what they do in office (at least by public opinion if not through elections). The emptiness of Anupong’s repeated coup threats during Somchai’s tenure were a clear indication that the military wants no repeat of the whole CNS/Surayud fiasco, which the army undertook reluctantly in the first place. But they haven’t let go of the idea that they can call the shots behind the scenes. Throughout Thaksin’s tenure and beyond, their agenda has always been to restore Thailand to the kind of poo yai-dominated bureaucratic polity it has been for most of its post-absolutist history; it was never about making Thailand a better, cleaner “democracy.” In all this, the biggest challenge to the dominance of the army, the Privy Council, and the Bangkok elites is not Thaksin, but rather ANY strong, organized, national political party. So long as Thai politics remains factionalized, fragmented, personalized, parochial, corrupt, and patronage-based, their ability to run the show behind the scenes remains intact. At the same time, should anyone call them out on it, they can always point to the grotesque ineptitude and corruption of local politicians as evidence that powerful unelected institutions are actually needed to protect Thailand from itself and its own citizens.

That’s why Prem won the day yesterday. Not only are his main rivals wounded, perhaps mortally so. What’s more, the marionette he found in Abhisit is still as pretty and inanimate as it ever was.