The results of Bangkok gubernatorial and councillor elections on May 22 have dealt a serious blow to the government of Prime Minister Prayut Cha-o-cha and the two coalition parties, the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) and Democrat Party.
The shocking victory of independent candidate, Chadchart Sittipunt, by a landslide and the clean sweep of 36 out of 50 council seats by the opposition parties, namely Pheu Thai, Move Forward and Thai Sang Thai of Khunying Sudarat Keyuraphan, former strategy chief of Pheu Thai, is a wake-up call for the Democrat and Palang Pracharath parties about what they may expect in the next general election in Bangkok, at least.
The nine councillor seats won by the Democrats, and two by the Palang Pracharath are indeed a humiliating lesson for the government, particularly for the Democrats which had already performed poorly at the last general election in Bangkok -- once its bastion for several decades.
And four years on with Prime Minister Prayut and his two army buddies, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon and Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda, the PPRP has not regained the trust of Bangkok voters.
However, the victories of Mr Chadchart and the opposition parties in Bangkok may not necessarily mean that voters in the rest of the country will vote in the same way as their peers in Bangkok.
Obviously, the Pheu Thai Party has been emboldened by its election success in Bangkok. It has threatened to derail the 2023 budget bill to be debated in the House until June 2 although Deputy Prime Minister Prawit has claimed that all coalition parties have promised to vote for the bill.
Not really, though. Former secretary-general of the Palang Pracharath Party, Capt Thamanat Prompow, and his followers, several of them sacked MPs of the Palang Pracharath Party, appear to have broken free from the reins of Gen Prawit and may join the opposition in an attempt to derail the budget bill.
Capt Thamanat, former secretary-general of the Setthakij Thai Party, recently wrested control of the party from party leader, Gen Wit Devahastin na Ayudhya, a close aide of Gen Prawit. He resigned from the party last week.
Fifteen executive committee members also quit to pave the way for the appointment of a new committee and party leader tipped to be Capt Thamanat himself.
Setthakij Thai was founded to serve as a "spare party" party to support the prime minister. It later became a home for MPs sacked from the Palang Pracharath Party, including Capt Thammanat.
After his resignation, Gen Wit told the media that he had originally thought the party would serve the public interest.
The remark was unbelievable for a person hand-picked by Gen Prawit to head the party. In real politics, a party is founded to serve politicians first and the people later.
Capt Thamanat claimed to have about 40 MPs under his wing, including about 16 from the micro parties, led by Pichet Sathiratchawal, a renegade MP of the PPRP. The group may provide swing votes which may turn the tables on the budget bill.
According to Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, the government's top legal expert, if the budget bill is voted down, there is no provision in the constitution which requires the government to step down or resign but, according to tradition, the government must choose either of the two options although there is no set timeframe to make such choice.
One consequence of any failure of the budget bill is the government will have to use the remainder of the 2022 budget this year until a new government forms.
As a result, too, two much-awaited organic bills on the election, including the bill concerning the two-ballot electoral system (one ballot for constituency MPs and the other for party-list MPs) will be stalled.
Parties like Pheu Thai are unlikely to return to the old electoral system of one ballot for both constituency and party-list MPs because they did not get a single party-list seat in the last election due to the complex calculation of party-list allocations.
But it will be a price they have to pay if they want to derail the budget bill or to force the prime minister to quit in a censure debate before the passage of the two election bills.
Whatever the outcome, the government appears to be sitting on very shaky ground, with only grim prospects of a second term for the prime minister and his two comrades-in-arms.
But for the people in Bangkok, as they made clear in their message from the May 22 election, they have had enough of this government and the three amigos.
Veera Prateepchaikul is former editor, Bangkok Post.
