Why Thailand’s Thanathorn isn’t headed to the streets

BANGKOK – Two weeks after Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the election-winning Move Forward Party for campaigning for royal reform, and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit insists everything is going to plan for his popular progressive movement.

As the now-banned founder of Move Forward’s dissolved progenitor, Future Forward Party, Thanathorn was widely seen as the mastermind behind Move Forward’s political juggernaut and is similarly seen as the guiding hand behind the newly formed third-generation People’s Party.

Many wondered if Thanathorn and Move Forward’s leaders would galvanize their masses and take to Bangkok’s streets in protest against the court’s August 7 dissolution decision, potentially opening a new orange-garbed chapter in the kingdom’s destabilizing street politics.

On August 23, in a presentation entitled “Sustaining the Pushback against Autocratization” at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, his alma mater and a historical hotbed of student ferment, Thanathorn declared victory in defeat through his affiliated parties’ normalization of even talking about royal reform, a taboo that can land critics in prison for 15 years.

He told the audience that his movement aims ultimately for a “soft landing” for the monarchy while insisting “radical problems require radical solutions” and that his “peaceful” vision for Thailand’s transformation “might take decades” rather than years.

In an exclusive interview with Asia Times’ Southeast Asia Editor Shawn W. Crispin in a decrepit campus hut overlooking the capital’s Chao Phraya River, Thanathorn explained why now is not the time for Move Forward’s disenfranchised voters and youthful supporters to take to the streets and articulated his long-game vision for Thailand’s