On 8 February, Thai voters went to the polls against a backdrop of war. A simmering border conflict with Cambodia had killed over 100 people and displaced some 750,000. Nationalist sentiment ran high, and the conservative Bhumjaithai Party capitalised on it. Its leader, Anutin Charnvirakul, continues as prime minister. The progressive People’s Party, the political force most closely associated with Thailand’s youthful democracy movement, lost support. The result was a blow to a movement already weakened by years of systematic repression.

Conflict reignites

After a long period of relative peace, the Cambodia-Thailand border conflict erupted back into life in 2025, producing the worst violence in over a decade. The dispute’s origins lie in the colonial era, when Cambodia was part of the French Empire. It centres on a contested claim to the Preah Vihear temple, which straddles the border. Thailand has never accepted a 1962 International Court of Justice ruling that settled the matter in Cambodia’s favour.

Armed clashes began in July 2025 when a Thai soldier was badly injured after stepping on a landmine. Cambodian rockets struck homes in Thailand, while the Thai air force bombed military facilities along the border. After four days of fighting, and following Donald Trump’s threats of trade repercussions, the two states agreed a ceasefire brokered by Malaysia, in coordination with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Chinese and US governments. After several initial violations, peace appeared to take hold.

Both sides, however, continued to use inflammatory language, with Cambodia claiming Thailand had used chemical weapons and Thailand saying it would demand reparations. At the ASEAN summit in October, they struck the more comprehensive Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord. But in November, Thailand suspended the agreement and fighting quickly resumed. Both sides agreed to another ceasefire on 27 December, to be monitored by an ASEAN observer team.

Fighting fuelled a humanitarian crisis that civil society responded to by providing emergency aid and support to displaced families. The conflict also brought repercussions for dissenting voices. Senator Angkhana Neelapaijit and human rights researcher Sunai Phasuk were among those who faced online death threats after criticising the government’s use of loudspeakers to broadcast disturbing sounds to Cambodians across the border.

In an election campaign marked by widespread nationalist disinformation, Anutin benefited from his staunch support of the military and positive perceptions of his conflict leadership, pledging to recruit 100,000 soldiers, close all border crossings and build a border wall. Bhumjaithai made heavy gains in constituencies close to the border.

Political turmoil

The conflict supercharged an already turbulent political context. Thai politics have long been volatile, characterised by numerous military coups and the Constitutional Court’s frequent dissolution of political parties and dismissal of prime ministers. Military and monarchical power remain strong and reinforce each other.

Two main forces typically contest power: a conservative, pro-monarchy and pro-military bloc, represented since 2018 by the Palang Pracharath Party, and a more economically populist and socially liberal party, currently Pheu Thai. Pheu Thai and its predecessors are the political vehicle of the super-rich Shinawatra family, which has provided four prime ministers. The last two military coups, in 2006 and 2014, removed its governments.

The political terrain has shifted in recent elections. Bhumjaithai, previously a minor party, benefited from splits in Palang Pracharath that saw former leaders establish competing parties. A major progressive force also burst onto the scene at the 2019 election. Although that election saw coup leaders don civilian clothes and engineer voting conditions that enabled them to retain power, it also marked the debut of the Future Forward party, which spoke to many young people’s appetite for economic, political and social change, including limits on military power.

Future Forward came third in 2019, and when the government intensified its crackdown on freedoms after the election, a vibrant, youth-led protest movement arose demanding the scrapping of restrictive laws and a new constitution. As the movement grew, protesters confronted a subject long taboo in Thai politics: the power and vast wealth of the monarchy.

The government responded with escalating repression, including violence against protesters and growing use of a suite of laws that criminalise dissent. These include the lèse-majesté or royal defamation law, which makes it a criminal offence to criticise the king. Authorities use it to hold people in detention for long spells, usually securing guilty verdicts and long sentences. After a period of restraint, the government applied the law with a vengeance as protests continued in 2020 and 2021.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights records that since July 2020, at least 291 people have been charged with lèse-majesté offences. In 2025, a cartoonist, a student activist and an opposition politician were among those jailed for offences that included questioning the monarchy’s budget and mocking the king’s attire. Altogether, authorities have prosecuted at least 1,992 people for expressing opinions or protesting since July 2020.

Arnon Nampa is among those behind bars. A founder of Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, he was arrested and detained several times following the start of protests in 2020, and first convicted of lèse-majesté offences in 2023. He’s so far been sentenced to over 30 years in prison.

Trouble at the top

Young people’s demands for change were to the fore in the 2023 election, when Move Forward, Future Forward’s successor, came first. But the Constitutional Court suspended its leader from parliament and a military-dominated Senate blocked its plan to form a coalition government with Pheu Thai. Pheu Thai then dropped its election pledge not to work with pro-military parties and formed a coalition with Bhumjaithai and others. Pheu Thai’s Srettha Thavsin became prime minister, only to be dismissed by the Constitutional Court the following year over ethics violations, having appointed a minister who’d previously been jailed for attempted bribery.

His replacement was Paetongtarn Shinawatra. But she got into trouble in June 2025 when a phone call with Hun Sen, Cambodia’s powerful former prime minister, was leaked. In the call, she appeared deferential towards him and criticised a Thai military leader. Bhumjaithai pulled out of the government.

The People’s Party, which replaced the dissolved Move Forward party in 2024 and held the most National Assembly seats, then faced a crucial decision. Constitutional rules blocked it putting its own candidate forward as prime minister. It struck a deal with Bhumjaithai to sustain a short-term minority government ahead of an early election, making Anutin Thailand’s third prime minister in as many years. This handed Anutin the advantage of setting the election date. He dissolved parliament on 12 December, capitalising on renewed hostilities with Cambodia as the campaign got under way.

Election woes

Bhumjaithai now holds 192 of 500 House of Representatives seats, up by 121, while both the People’s Party and Pheu Thai lost seats. Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai have agreed to form a coalition government, together commanding a majority.

Voters cast two ballots, one for their constituency and one for a party list, but the electoral system skews towards constituency votes, which account for 400 seats. The People’s Party, which consistently led the polls, came first in the party list vote, but its concentration of voters in cities meant it failed to win a proportionate number of constituencies. It’s also likely that some voters punished the People’s Party for its past criticism of the military, and that the conflict and recent political instability weighed more heavily on voters’ minds than its reform agenda.

The election also couldn’t be considered entirely free and fair. An independent monitoring association received over 5,000 complaints alleging voting irregularities, including claims of discrepancies in vote counting and unusually high numbers of invalid ballots. Civil society raised concerns about voting secrecy, with the introduction of QR codes on ballots creating the potential to track voters’ choices. Civil society groups worked hard to monitor the election, but Thailand’s repressive laws posed a barrier: authorities brought criminal charges against some people for alleging fraud and protesting about electoral conduct.

People’s Party candidates also complained about the impact of patronage politics, with Bhumjaithai exploiting its superior resources to recruit influential local figures in rural areas. Ousted People’s Party politicians spoke of being beaten by candidates able to hand out money to cultivate support. Repression, too, has taken its toll: many former People’s Party leaders have been given 10-year bans from politics, and 44 more face potential bans for calling for lèse-majesté reforms.

Reform on hold

The election result is an undoubted setback for hopes of reform. The conservative government has no interest in softening the lèse-majesté law. The People’s Party even had to drop its commitment to reforming the law for this election to avoid the risk of another ban. The early election also killed off a bill granting amnesty for some political offences. The House of Representatives passed it in October 2025, but it was still stuck in the Senate when Anutin dissolved parliament, so it fell.

One potential positive came from the People’s Party’s short-lived deal with Bhumjaithai: in a referendum, voters endorsed the start of a process to develop a new constitution. The existing constitution certainly needs reform, having been developed under military rule and approved through a deeply compromised 2016 referendum held in repressive conditions. It entrenches military and royal power, gives an unaccountable Senate a significant role, including power to appoint the politically interventionist Constitutional Court judges, and subordinates civil and political rights to considerations of morality. But the vote only marks the start of a process that now lies in the hands of a conservative parliament.

The new government is a coalition of convenience between two parties that don’t naturally align, and Thailand’s political turbulence may not be over. Its economy remains one of the region’s weakest performers, and many young people’s appetite for change remains unfulfilled. The People’s Party must now mount effective opposition amid ongoing repression, and civil society must scrutinise the new government, hold it to account and work to shape the constitutional reform process as an opportunity for positive change.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org