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Thailand election: a win for the military and marijuana? The highs and lows in Sunday’s vote
- Democrats have been decimated, prompting Abhisit Vejjajiva to quit as leader
- Future Forward is ascendant, under leadership of 40-year-old billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit
Reading Time:3 minutes
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Thailand’s pro-military Palang Pracharat party has emerged from Sunday’s election with the lion’s share of votes but that was not the only surprising outcome.
Other parties both new and old recorded success and failure – and in one case near decimation – producing several talking points beyond the long-running power struggle between pro-military forces represented by Palang Pracharat and the electoral machine of billionaire former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The election commission has also been placed under the microscope for its bizarre conduct on election night.
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The South China Morning Post examines the most interesting subplots from the Thai election.
BYE BYE, ABHISIT
Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former prime minister and long-time leader of the Democrat Party, the country’s oldest political organisation, was by far the biggest individual casualty of the vote. His party – royalist and neoliberal in outlook – loathes Thaksin’s allies just as intensely as junta chief Prayuth Chan-ocha does but the Democrats could not abide the military’s disregard for democratic norms.
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