Populist Project: Populism Policies under [Thailand’s] New Constitution and the Inheritance of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO)

Abstract

“Populist Project” was the policy implementation of the National Council for Peaceand Order (NCPO) that had proceeded from 2014 to 2017 and was then monitored in a way that the NCPO regime made the transfer of power [from a military to a civiliangovernment] under the party’s name, Palang Pracharath as a proxy party, through the 2019electoral process. Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) was a core party to form a governmentand transformed the NCPO implemented policies into line with successful implementationof ‘populist policies’ in the past period. The transformation [of ‘populist policies’ into‘Populist Project] entailed gaining in its political popularity and meeting the basic needsof the general populace continually. Although the middle-classed people or investorscensured the ‘Civil State Policy’ on the loss of economic efficiency, the government’spolicy manifesto had yet to be rooted out of populism policies. The reasonable cause wasto satisfy the vast majority of political bastion in civil society, viz, ‘grass-roots groups’.Consequently, the new government formed by the transfer of NCPO political power to the 2019 electoral process is obligated to implement its ‘civil state policy’ with moreemphasis on crucial political support bases and political popularities in order to win the election than the proposed party policies by PPRP. In its election manifesto, the PPRP hadindeed proposed creating the sustainable economic systems in relation to ‘welfare state’with a focus on the efficiency of collecting taxes and providing taxpayers with socialwelfare benefits.

This article aims to study the meanings of populism, the operational guidelines for government policy implementation in Thailand, the integration of civil state programsconsistent with the national strategic plans enshrined in the new constitution, and the problems of inequalities in Thai society under [neo] populism. The study showed that the operational guidelines of ‘populism in the previous periods’ adopted by prior governmentswere transformed and tailored to the party platform of ‘civil state (Pracharath) programs’ designed and implemented by NCPO and the transfer of NCPO political power to ‘PalangPracharath Party’ after the 2019 election. They could be analysed and summarized intofive major aspects with regard to the [successful] policy implementation of populist policiesvia civil state policies, namely: 1) empowering policy legitimacies and political popularities;2) incorporating legal mechanisms designed to enable the National Council for Peace andOrder (NCPO) to transfer its power into the 2017 Constitution consistent with the 20-yearnational strategic plans; 3) undertaking the NCPO implemented policies ; 4) demonstratingthe model of policy-oriented identities, and 5) identifying political policies in accordancewith a context of political competition.