The Thai Palang Pracharath party sought on Thursday for coalition partners from a wide range of potential ally. The party argues that it wants to continue holding the military junta leader Prayuth Chan o-cha, who led a coup in 2014, as prime minister.
It is expected that the party can easily form the next government, as only a few votes are required in the elected House of Representatives to elect the prime minister according to the complicated new election rules of the military regime.
Political scientist Yuttaporn Issarachai of Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University said that the Palang Pracharath party is likely to look for other coalition partners to retain General Prayuth Chan o-cha as prime minister.
"Prayuth will definitely be prime minister," he said in this scenario. At the same time, however, he added that the government is likely to be unstable only by a narrow majority in parliament.
The leaders of the Democratic Front have loudly claimed that both the electoral system and the electoral commission are biased and help to expand the military regime. The leaders of the Democratic Front have repeatedly threatened to take legal action against the Electoral Commission (EC).
However, both the election officials and the Palang Pracharat party deny the allegations against them.
The Democratic Front of the Seven Parties is led by the Pheu Thai Party, which was loyal to ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in 2006 in a coup.
The pro-Thaksin parties had won every election since then, but each time their governments were overthrown by legal decisions and coups.
In the recent intervention, the military overthrew a government led by Thaksin's sister Yingluck in 2014.
It could take weeks before a new government is formed, even though the pro-junta party is in a favorable position, the Thai media reports.
The obvious potential allies of the Palang Pracharat party are the "pro-establishment" Democratic Party and the Bhumjaithai Party, which inter alia advocated the legalization of marijuana.
The Democrats won 52 seats and the Bhumjaithai party 51 seats. This means that the Palang Pracharath party, which has won 115 seats, can be squeezed over the magical number of 126 votes needed in parliament to approve the prime minister under the new system.
Democrat spokesman Thana Chiravinij told news agency Reuters that the party would meet next week to decide whether to join forces with the Palang Pracharath party in the government or form an "independent opposition".
At the same time, however, he made it very clear that the Democrats would never join the Democratic Front because they are led by the Thaksin friendly Pheu Thai Party.
Prominent members of the "pro-establishment" Democratic Party led protests in 2014 against the civilian government led by Thaksin's sister Yingluck Shinawatra. Some members of the Democrats openly demanded military intervention.
The leader of the Bhumjaithai party, Mr. Anutin Charnvirakul, was not available to the Thai media for comment. However, he said on the party's Facebook page that the Bhumjaithai party "still listens to people".
The new constitution after the coup calls for the 250-seat Senate, fully appointed by the junta, to be elected to the post of prime minister together with the 500-seat elected House of Representatives.
Through the effective involvement of the Senate, the pro-army parties gain a margin of 250 votes to reach the required majority of 376 votes in the combined House-Senate vote.
In contrast, the Democratic Front, thanks to the appointed Senate, has virtually no chance of forming a government.
"Thailand is not returning to democracy," said Titipol Phakdeewanich, Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University.
"The election was an insane attempt for the military to stay in power so that it can tell the international community that it is an elected government," he said.
The Democratic Front also complained that it had rejected the expected majority of 255 seats in the House of Representatives when the Electoral Commission decided to use a new formula for seat allocation.
The new formula gave eleven tiny parties a seat each, most of them from the anti-military Future Forward Party, part of the opposition alliance.
Under the new formula, the Democratic Front won 245 seats in parliament - just under the hoped-for majority would block the legislation if Prayuth remained Prime Minister.
The Pheu Thai party said on Wednesday it would use every legal way to crack down on the electoral commission's formula.
Sources: Workpoint News, Thai Visa, die Welt, Chang Rai Times
