Pheu Thai’s search for a leader

The biggest question involving Pheu Thai and the next general election may not be who will lead the biggest, yet trouble-plagued, party next, but how much support it will get from Thaksin Shinawatra. Recent political setbacks have made party members as well as political analysts wonder if his commitment to the party will remain as strong as before, which would have major repercussions either way.
The Thaksin factor will also determine who leads the party into the election, which the military government said could take place in November next year. Sudarat Keyuraphan has been fast off the block as a leading candidate, but her campaign on the back of a six-wheel truck for public involvement in honour of His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej has backfired badly and she has had to tearfully deny being an opportunist.
Other candidates include Chaturon Chaisaeng, who can be projected as a human rights fighter, legal ace Bhokin Bhalakula, another legal expert Phonthep Thepkanjana, former justice minister Chaikasem Nitisiri and Monthathip Kovitcharoenkul, a businesswoman formerly known as Yaowaman Shinawatra. Monthathip has recently ruled out entering politics, but many people said politics had a funny way of engaging people proclaiming no interest in it.
The “leadership” situation, according to Pheu Thai insiders, is “unclear” at best, and what has happened to Sudarat will lead to greater caution among everybody concerned. It is agreed, though, that the new leader will reflect what Thaksin wants. For example, Sudarat’s selection would send a more “reconciliatory” message than some other candidates, while a leader with strong connections to the Shinawatras would signal continued belligerence.
It will be more than a year before the first election since the 2014 coup is held, giving the who’s who in Pheu Thai plenty of time for soul-searching. Many people, however, are asking whether anyone outside the Shinawatra circle is having any say. The party does not have a natural or democratic leadership transition structure, largely because it is virtually monopolised by the Shinawatras.
To Pheu Thai, the Shinawatras have been both a blessing and a liability. In late 2013, the party looked set to comfortably hold on to power in the years to come until the Amnesty Bill fiasco changed everything. Now, party members and the Shinawatras themselves will have to weigh that blessing against the apparent liability.
Pheu Thai has always deemed the middle-class uprising against it as a Democrat conspiracy. That may be as wrong as the Democrats’ assumption that Thaksin’s political party only bought its way to power. Mass protests in Bangkok were by no means a show of support for the Democrats, who were always snubbed by city voters themselves, but a genuine demonstration of discontent with how Pheu Thai implemented its policies and exercised its mandate.
In other words, while the Democrat Party will have to reconsider its rural policies, Pheu Thai must review, with a truly open mind, what has happened in Bangkok, which had rejected a Pheu Thai gubernatorial candidate in favour of a much-maligned incumbent city governor just before the coup. 
Unless Pheu Thai realises exactly why Bangkokians rallied against it, the party may face a very long, rough road ahead.
Pheu Thai can come back to power, although it might not be the kind of “power” it was looking for. With a new election looming, Pheu Thai has many key questions to ponder and one of them is how it would enter the race – for the nation’s and its own sake.