I'm ready to finish the job, says Thailand's 'almost prime minister' Pita Limjaroenrat

Pita Limjaroenrat was foiled in his bid to become Thailand's prime minister by conservative forces after a 2023 election win. But he's not finished in politics, he told Global South Voices' Richard Heydarian.Speaking on the Oxford Policy Pod, Pita insisted he had not retired but was eager to get back to complete his work to reform his country's political system.

"I feel like I want to go back and really do my magic," Pita said. So I am still very capable and rigorous to go back when I have a chance, to finish what I had started."

Pita's Move Forward party won 151 of the 500 seats in Thailand's 2023 general election, a surprise result that made it the biggest group in parliament. However, his nomination to become prime minister was blocked when almost all the unelected conservative senators appointed by the military refused to back him. Months of legal wrangling followed, during which Pita was accused of various violations of parliamentary rules, preventing him from pursuing his bid to lead the country. At the end of it, he and several other party leaders were banned from politics for a decade. The Constitutional Court ruled that their promise to reform the lèse-majesté law, which shields the monarchy from criticism, was an attempt to overthrow the institution.

Pita said that he believes Thailand is suffering from a "Tyranny of the Minority" whereby the military, the media, and business monopolies combine to maintain the status quo, regardless of the wishes of the masses.

"That allows elections once in a while," he noted, "But [they] have that constitutional mechanism to make sure the election outcome and election result do not have to be the same. To me, it's not a democracy, it's a competitive autocracy."

He insisted that his intentions were not anti-monarchist but only against those who were seeking to involve the king in politics for their own ends.