Voters resoundingly rejected the military-backed parties that have dominated the Southeast Asian nation for almost ten years, giving Thailand’s reformist opposition the most seats and the greatest proportion of the popular vote in a general election.
The populist Pheu Thai Party and the progressive Move Forward Party (MFP) were predicted to gain roughly 286 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives after virtually all ballots had been tallied on Monday.
But because of distorted legislative regulations that let 250 senators who were chosen by the military to vote on the prime minister, it is still unclear if they would be able to form the next administration.
This implies that in order to create a new government, MFP and Pheu Thai will require the assistance of minor parties.
The MFP, a progressive youth-led party that ran in the general elections for the first time on a daring program of reforming the monarchy and curtailing military authority by revising the nation’s constitution and abolishing conscription, emerged as the largest winner on Sunday.
Preliminary results posted on the website of the electoral commission indicated that with 99 percent of the ballots tabulated, the MFP was poised to win the largest portion of the lower house with a total of 147 seats. The number comprises 35 of the 100 proportionally assigned seats to parties and 112 of the 400 members that are directly elected.
Analysts hailed the result for MFP as “outstanding” because pre-election polls had shown that Pheu Thai, which has dominated elections since 2001 and is connected to the wealthy Shinawatra family, would win the majority of the vote.
According to the most recent results, Pheu Thai won 138 seats overall, 112 of which were obtained directly and 27 via party lists.
