For those who do not know, MFP is the "Move Forward Party" and they went from being almost nothing in the political sphere to winning the popular vote for Prime Minister of Thailand. It was at this point that I, and likely a lot of Thai nationals, found out that winning the popular vote of the people doesn't necessarily mean that the person with the most votes gets the job they were elected by the people to do. It has to first be approved by the Parliament, and the Thai Parliament didn't certify the election nor assign the winner of the general election as Prime Minister as was decided by the people.
The main party opposing the MFP is a party called Pheu Thai Party, who is a long-established and rather old-school player in Thai politics. From an outsider's point of view their actions to block the assignment of legally elected PM, Pita Limjaroenrat can be seen as deep corruption inside the government halls, which seems to be a tradition not just in Thailand but likely around the world. I think that most of the time the government does a good job of hiding this sort of thing, but this time the word is out and the people of Thailand are not pleased about it.
Political unrest is nothing new in Thailand as coup d'états are basically a national sport that happens every 10 years or so here.
Activists and protestors turned up en masse in Bangkok over the week to show their disdain for the politicians including standing outside of the Pheu Thai Party headquarters and throwing flour on the officials in attendance.
While this did make national news I had to look it up to understand why they were throwing flour. As it turns out there is a member of another long-standing political party referred to as "PPP" that has a high ranking member named Thamnat that was arrested and deported from Australia for importing heroin. Because he is rich the charges didn't stick and Thamnat claimed that the heroin was actually flour. I gotta love the memory and sense of humor in Thai protestors.
The reason why the protests are happening at Pheu Thai's headquarters is because their party is looking like they are going to form a coalition with PPP, who have vowed to never work with MFP (Move Forward Party - confused yet?) in any capacity despite the fact that MFP is very popular with the general public.
There were additional protests all over Bangkok throughout the week that were attended by large numbers of MFP supporters.
I think that the established parties are making a big mistake by publicly refusing to work with an emerging and very popular party. Elected officials are supposed to represent the wishes of the population... even though we all know that they don't really do that. I just find it odd that the old-school parties would be so brazen in their defiance of what the people of the country have obviously declared they want.
The problem here is likely the same problem that faces a lot of nations and is similar to USA. Some of the old school parties have geographical strongholds in their respective provinces, where MFP has very little support. Therefore these elected officials don't really need to worry about being voted out because they have convinced the area where they need votes to vote for them already. They feel no need to appeal to other areas of the country just like the governor of Florida doesn't feel any reason to appeal to California nor New York voters.
Unfortunately, I feel as though this is going to just lead to more and more civil unrest because these MP's are basically untouchable and according to the existing laws of the Constitution of Thailand, they aren't even breaking any. Public opinion of these MP's need only be maintained in their home areas, so they likely do not care what the people in other areas think of them, no matter how much flour they throw at them.
The flour incident resulted in the press conference being held in a different location and all the attendees left "out the back."