- Monday, March 25, 2019

BANGKOK — With his pro-military party doing far better than forecast in Sunday’s national elections, authoritarian Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Monday appeared poised to extend his term in office, even as parties opposed to the ruling government junta struggled to form a coalition strong enough to oppose him.

Voting results were marred by irregularities and election fraud accusations by a number of parties. The government-appointed Election Commission said results for 150 of the 500 seats in the House of Representatives were still being tabulated and wouldn’t be available until Friday.

Partial results showed that the military-backed Palang Pracharath party won the most popular votes nationwide, The Associated Press reported. Under the constitution he pushed through the National Assembly after taking power in 2014, Mr. Prayuth will likely benefit from the government-appointed Senate when it joins the House to name a prime minister.

Still, the first real elections in nearly eight years produced genuine politicking in Bangkok, with smaller parties that fared well angling to decide where to throw their support.

The most stunning victory by a smaller party was Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit’s rebellious Future Forward, which finished third. The party promised to punish anyone who leads a coup, end army conscription, slash the military’s budget and rewrite Mr. Prayuth’s 2017 constitution.

Mr. Thanathorn is a 40-year-old scion of a wealthy family manufacturing automobile parts. Most of his support came from younger voters.

Also surprising was the strong showing from the midsized Bhumjai Thai party.

Its conservative leader, Anutin Charnvirakul, gained popularity — and notoriety — during the campaign in this agricultural nation by demanding the legalization of recreational marijuana so farmers could profit from a cash crop bigger than rice, sugar or rubber.

After Mr. Anutin said he would join any party that accepted his platform, Bhumjai Thai’s roster of successful candidates became a prize.

Mr. Prayuth’s government recently legalized medical marijuana but stopped short of legalizing the plant for recreational or commercial use.

Some took the questioning of the validity of the vote as an ominous sign.

“People now start questioning the credibility of this election,” Future Forward’s Mr. Thanathorn told Bloomberg News on Monday. “There might be another election, there might be another military intervention.”

The political math for anti-junta forces is daunting. If Mr. Prayuth’s Palang Pracharat party captures at least 126 of the 500 House seats, or he attracts other allies, then he could add his 250 junta-appointed Senate seats to secure a required 376 seats to remain prime minister. Many Thai political analysts say that is the most likely outcome.

The opposition Pheu Thai Party faces an uphill battle in assembling a majority coalition entirely from the House because the Senate is expected to reject it. As a result, Pheu Thai’s main prime ministerial candidate, Sudarat Keyuraphan, was luring other parties in the House that oppose the military’s domination.

Ms. Sudarat’s next best hope is to gather a 251-seat House majority and demand to form a new government.

It was not clear whether the Senate would remain neutral to give Mr. Prayuth’s opponents a chance to govern or whether it would vote en bloc for the prime minister and former military chief to provide him an unbeatable majority.

Whoever is chosen as prime minister will govern a country polarized by decades of political unrest, class divisions, widespread corruption and what has been described as the world’s most unequal levels of income distribution.

Mr. Prayuth, who seized power by toppling an elected civilian government in 2014, would no longer have his near-absolute powers and could be stymied by anti-Prayuth House members.

Should an anti-junta prime minister somehow come to power, he or she would face a Senate likely to be heavily stocked with Prayuth loyalists.

An extended period of unrest and uncertainty in Bangkok, many fear, will tempt the army to stage yet another coup and again clamp this Southeast Asian, Buddhist-majority country under military rule.

Mr. Prayuth, supported by the military, royalists and many elite Thai families, engineered the 2014 coup to oust the government of Pheu Thai’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose billionaire brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was similarly toppled by the military in a 2006 putsch but retains a strong popular following.

The election Sunday ignited a confrontation between the military and Mr. Thaksin, who they insist controls Pheu Thai politicians despite their denials.

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