The Party That Never Learned

On 7 Aug 2024, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party (MFP) and banned its executives for 10 years, citing the party’s campaign to amend Article 112. Pita, a Harvard Kennedy School alumni was the prime–ministerial candidate in 2023, but the military-appointed Senate blocked his sworn in. While four years earlier, the Future Forward Party (FFP) that led by Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit was also dissolved on 21 Feb 2020 over an illegal loan case, its executives were banned for 10 years. This showed that the party failed to draw the lesson from its former party.

What did the party communicate?

They based their point of view on the deep, structural restructuring involve constitution, monarchy law, military, Senate, and economic power of the elite.

• Demilitarization, ending the conscription to reduce the military spending
• Demonopolization, taking on the conglomerate monopolies that intertwined with the elite
• Decentralization, pushing the elections of provincial governors, fairer budget allocation
• Curb the unelected Senate’s veto over PM selection
• Soften Article 112

It is not that I disagree with their political reforms. My point is that, despite everything Thanathorn paved the way for until Pita became the prime-ministerial candidate, the MFP should have focused on what is realistic. Their point of view ignores the local context and Thailand’s historical trajectory, not just the government’s journey since 1973 and the coups along the way. They failed to appreciate what we have today and, in doing so, threw away four years of the chance to run this country.

Some things they could do

1. Democratize data
   • Make money, services, and decisions legible to citizens and frontline staffs. They can publish monthly school-grant receipts, clinic drug stocks, and local works bills of quantities on web + on-site boards, with a simple LINE complaint loop. This proven success in Uganda and Indonesia before.
2. Design thinking
   • Make cheating riskier than complying, by design, not crackdowns. For example, routine randomized audits which it has been employed in Indonesia KDP roads project and Rajasthan policing in India.
3. De-risk & Sequence
   • pick one narrow institutional change per cycle; bank service wins first, tackle harder rules later, like the foot-in-the-door theory in Psychology by start with procedural fixes that face less elite resistance.

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Idea references:

1. Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2014. “Under the Thumb of History? Political Institutions and the Scope for Action.” American Economic Review, 6: 951-971.
2. Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. Poor Economics, Chapter 10.