Thailand Heads for Election as PM Dissolves Parliament

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00:00Thailand is heading for an early election after the Thai Prime Minister dissolved Parliament late on Thursday.

00:06It comes amid a border conflict with Cambodia that's seen multiple casualties on both sides.

00:11Bloomberg's team leader for Southeast Asia and economics and government, Ramzi Al-Rikabi, joins us from Bangkok.

00:18We just have some crossing lines on the terminal, essentially saying the Prime Minister,

00:24Mr. Newton, does not necessarily see an impact of that dissolution having an impact on the border spat that is happening with Cambodia.

00:35Give us the latest update on the ramifications of this move by the Prime Minister.

00:42Good morning, folks. Late last night, the Prime Minister dissolved Parliament, which was a bit of a surprise move.

00:49He had planned to do this a little bit later, but he felt a bit of heat.

00:55Just to have some background, he's got a minority party that's backing him, the People's Party, which is more popular than his own.

01:05Now, to become the Prime Minister, he had guaranteed them that he would help amend the Constitution.

01:11He backtracked on that. They threatened a no-confidence vote, and so he decided to go early with elections.

01:16Now, one of the reasons why he's in a bit of a good position to do that is, unfortunately, because of the border clash with Cambodia.

01:24That has stirred up a lot of nationalist fervor.

01:27He's tried to project an image of being very strong on the border, not giving an inch,

01:33even pushing back against pressure from the U.S. and Donald Trump to stop fighting on the border.

01:39His predecessor, if you remember, was ousted because she bungled how the border clash was managed.

01:45So, at this point, he sees pressure coming from his partners in Parliament.

01:51He dissolves, calls elections, and hopes that this war that he's fighting gives him the nationalist edge

01:58to maybe expand his coalition and then get a fresh mandate.

02:03Yeah, exactly. We have seen that strong nationalist sentiment off the back of this border clash.

02:09So, what is the outlook in terms of the timing here and the next steps, essentially?

02:16Yeah. So, the Royal Court has approved the dissolution of Parliament,

02:23and now goes to the Election Commission to decide when they will do it.

02:26I believe it needs to be between 45 to 60 days.

02:30So, that puts us somewhere between late January and, say, like the first week or so of February.

02:37So, from now until then, obviously, Anitin is going to get rolling on the campaign trail.

02:43The People's Party, this time, has three candidates that it could field.

02:48Again, it has been more popular in the past than his party.

02:55It's one of the most popular, but because the reforms it's called for,

03:00particularly around the royal insult laws and around the Constitution,

03:05the so-called establishment in Thailand has been able to more or less kneecap that party,

03:12has had its candidates thrown out, has had them kicked out of politics,

03:18has had charges brought against them to sort of keep those reforms from happening.

03:22So, it'll be an interesting next two months to see how a very popular party calling for reforms

03:29takes on a pretty well-established establishment party

03:33that has been pretty strong against its neighbor in this war.