Hindsight is likely to place Srettha Thavisin in Thai political annals as a prime minister who tried his best but ultimately succumbed to forces way beyond his control. While his nearly 12-month tenure in office came up short on policy deliverables, it nevertheless reset Thailand's foreign policy projection on Myanmar amid more omnidirectional relations with the major powers.
To be sure, Mr Srettha's domestic policy agenda was stymied and obstructed from the outset. The lesson for his successor, Prime Minster Paetongtarn Shinawatra, is that policy progress depends less on merit and more on the bargaining and alignment of interests with forces behind the scenes.
To be sure, Mr Srettha's rise to the premiership was unwitting, a result of his connection with Pheu Thai founder Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister and also former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the military-inspired 2017 constitution, whereby all political parties contesting the 2023 general election had to come up with a slate of up to three candidates for prime minister. Most major parties forwarded just one, but the Pheu Thai Party proposed three in late 2022 because it had faced dissolutions and premiership disqualifications in the past.
Ms Paetongtarn and Chaikasem Nitisiri, the party's elderly legal hand, were the other two. When the Move Forward Party won the poll but was kept away from office by constitutional means, Pheu Thai was co-opted in a bargain that brought its founder, Thaksin Shinawatra, back from exile on the same day that Mr Srettha received sufficient votes from the military-appointed Senate to take the helm.
Heading a coalition government combining Pheu Thai with pro-military parties that had conspired to overthrow Ms Yingluck's government in a military coup in 2014, Mr Srettha's outsider status was his main strength and chief weakness. As an outsider, he was not beholden to vested interests and patronage politics that underpin elections and coalition governments. His billionaire status from family-owned property development was measured in baht rather than dollars. Mr Srettha pitched himself as a successful businessman in a technocratic fashion to help get the Thai economy out of its persistent doldrums.
He made a host of foreign trips to drum up foreign investments and to show that Thailand now had an elected government after years of military-authoritarian rule and that the country was once again open for business. Mr Srettha met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attended China's Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in October 2023. But unlike his immediate predecessor, he showed that Thailand was no longer as reliant on Chinese support as in the coup years by visiting myriad other countries. At the main dinner of the Apec summit in San Francisco in November 2023, he was seated next to US President Joe Biden.
On Myanmar, Thailand finally corrected its wayward course of supporting the junta in Nay Pyi Taw during Bangkok's previous military-backed regime. Under the Srettha government, former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara made headway and gained the trust of resistance forces by recognising and engaging them directly and by providing humanitarian assistance and overall goodwill.
It was a more balanced approach, and Thailand needed to play a leading role in Asean in search of a way forward in Myanmar. Mr Parnpree should now feel vindicated for his decision to quit the government last April after a cabinet reshuffle dropped his dual deputy PM post. Coalition politics and power plays behind the scenes are not worth putting up with in view of what's happened to Mr Srettha.
A self-proclaimed "salesman" for Thailand everywhere he went, Mr Srettha sought investments from big tech in Silicon Valley and infrastructure investors in the Middle East, South Asia, and elsewhere in Asia and Europe.
In fact, he seemed desperate to mobilise foreign investment to shore up the Thai economy, whose trend growth had declined by more than half to just 1.5% annually during the previous nine years under military-backed rule. But Mr Srettha really had no chance of succeeding.
His domestic policy initiatives, particularly the 10,000-baht digital wallet scheme for each of 50 million Thais to spur consumption and boost growth, faced legal opposition from the beginning. The "land bridge" scheme to link the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea did not gain traction. The "soft power" projects to harness Thailand's cultural capital did not gain momentum. The pending free-trade agreements with the European Union and European Free Trade Association are still awaiting a conclusion and were surpassed instead by the Thai FTA with Sri Lanka, which was unsubstantial and not comprehensive in coverage. In turn, Mr Srettha had to grab what he could to deliver economic growth, thereby resorting to visa-free tourism from China and Russia.
After six months in office, Mr Srettha appeared exasperated. While Move Forward was being lined up for dissolution, Mr Srettha faced a petition from an expiring lot of 40 military-appointed senators for a cabinet reshuffle that put in Pichit Chuenban, who was convicted and jailed in 2008 for trying to bribe court officials on behalf of Mr Thaksin and his wife, as a junior minister in violation of the constitution. Mr Pichit, well known in political circles as a trusted legal aid of the Shinawatra family, was a cabinet choice beyond Mr Srettha's control. As an outsider who could work without the baggage of vested interests, Mr Srettha's weakness was that he had no support base within the Pheu Thai Party. The reshuffle, as with the earlier government formation, was not his doing but it eventually became his undoing.
He was unceremoniously sacked by the Constitutional Court in a 5-4 verdict. Removing a sitting prime minister with such a narrow margin was astounding. On closer scrutiny, it has also become controversial.
One of the five judges in favour of Mr Srettha's disqualification, Udom Sitthiwirattham, publicly stated two weeks ago that Move Forward Party's leaders should be grateful for his dissolution decision because its successor Prachachon (People's) Party has received tens of million baht in public donations in a matter of days. To the extent that this remark showed undue contempt and prejudice towards the Move Forward Party, Mr Srettha should take comfort in the judgement on his role as premier.
In the end, what happened to Mr Srettha was somewhat analogous to the fate of Samak Sundaravej, a veteran politician who became prime minister in 2008 by leading Pheu Thai's earlier banner under the Palang Prachachon (People's Power) Party as a Thaksin nominee. With ultra-right-wing credentials, Samak thought he could help bridge the gap between the conservative establishment and the Thaksin camp. Yet much of his premiership coincided with rabid yellow-shirt protests that eventually laid the ground for the Constitutional Court to disqualify him for hosting a cooking show on TV and receiving a token honorarium for it.
The name of the game for the establishment is to divide and rule, use and expend, as situations and circumstances require. Put this way, Mr Srettha's demise at this time in this fashion is probably better than later in worse ways.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, PhD, is professor at the Faculty of Political Science and a senior fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies.