The end of the bid by Pita Limjaroenrat to become the next Prime Minister of Thailand was expected even without the complication of the country’s Constitutional court suspending his membership of Parliament. This was because the 42-year-old leader of the Move Forward Party just did not have the numbers to cross the half-way mark in a legislature that consists of 750 members, of whom fully a third owe their positions to the military. But with Deputy Speaker Pichet Chuamuangphan, a nominee of one of the eight parties forming a coalition that had offered Mr Pita’s candidature, ruling that a person can be nominated only once for the post in a parliament session, his fate was sealed – at least for now. This though was only a procedural wrinkle in a candidature fouled by other and larger issues, of which Mr Pita’s opposition to Thailand’s lese majeste laws was the most significant. The other issue, of course, was his ownership of shares in a defunct media company, also barred under Thai law, and which attracted the top court’s intervention. What then is Thailand’s future? While Mr. Pita’s party had claimed the most seats in the 500-member lower house, it was only marginally ahead of the Pheu Thai party controlled by the Shinawatra family that has given the country two former Prime Ministers.

Under the terms of the agreement reached between Move Forward, Pheu Thai and six smaller coalition partners, Mr. Pita was to have first crack at Prime Ministership but would endorse a candidate from Pheu Thai should he fail. Now that he has, it is widely expected that real estate tycoon Srettha Thavisin from Pheu Thai will throw his hat into the ring. While the numbers will not change for Mr. Thavisin, and still be short of the half-way mark in the 750-member Electoral College, he will hope that enough of the militaryappointed senators will back his bid. For one, his party does not back all the radical reforms that Move Forward does; it certainly hasn’t sought major changes in the role of the monarch.

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Second, when all is said and done, Thailand does need a government; the present state of uncertainty cannot continue indefinitely. Finally, the installation of a government of which Move Forward is a part, even if it does not head it, will assuage its supporters who are already out on the streets of Bangkok to protest. But if this does happen, it will not be before the establishment and at least some of the coalition partners have come to behind-doors agreements on the monarchy, and at least some of the issues that the military-backed elite have flagged. The key question that will remain is whether a coalition government headed by Pheu Thai will go ahead with constitutional changes to unshackle Parliament from the military. It must, if it is not to be accused of betraying its mandate.