BANGKOK, July 21 – Thailand’s election-winning Move Forward party on Friday made way for runner-up and alliance partner Pheu Thai to try to form the next government, after its leader’s bid was twice thwarted this month by a military-backed Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The progressive Move Forward and populist Pheu Thai have the lion’s share of the 500 lower house seats after trouncing conservative, army backed rivals in a May 14 election<\/a>, in what was a clear rejection of nine years of military-backed rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But a big obstacle for their alliance is the 249-member Senate, which was appointed by the royalist army after a 2014 coup and has a record of voting as a bloc to protect its interests, including stopping governments from being formed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The eight-party alliance backed Move Forward’s leader Pita Limjaroenrat for prime minister before conservative opponents and Senators blocked him<\/a> in a July 13 parliamentary vote and stifled<\/a> his re-nomination six days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The resistance underlines the threat posed by Move Forward’s anti-establishment agenda, which includes ending business monopolies, reforming the military and most controversial, amending article 112 of the criminal code, a tough law that insulates the monarchy from public criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pheu Thai, Thailand’s most dominant political party in the past two decades, said it would start lobbying lawmakers for their votes and identify what obstacles were ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We will find more votes from the Senate and other parties,” Pheu Thai leader Chonlanan Srikaew told a press conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Article 112 was the condition that blocked us, we will need to get more votes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BANGKOK, July 21 – Thailand’s election-winning Move Forward party on Friday made way for runner-up and alliance partner Pheu Thai to try to form the next government, after its leader’s bid was twice thwarted this month by a military-backed Senate. The progressive Move Forward and populist Pheu Thai have the lion’s share of the 500 lower house seats after trouncing conservative, army backed rivals in a May 14 election, in what was a clear rejection of nine years of military-backed rule. But a big obstacle for their alliance is the 249-member Senate, which was appointed by the royalist army after… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33501,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33499\/revisions\/33501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}