Second, the BJT’s sizeable win shows that it is possible to buck the trend of political splintering.
While its core strategy of consolidating power at the local level through alliances with powerful political families (baan yai) has paid off, its victory was largely due to a fortunate combination of circumstances rather than deliberate design.
LEANING ON NATIONAL SECURITY
The BJT could not have predicted the about-face in Thai-Cambodian relations in mid-2025 over a leaked phone call between Thailand’s then Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, and the consequent flare-up of their decades-old, simmering border conflict.
Neither could the BJT have expected that its audacious bid to replace Pheu Thai as the leading party in a new government in September 2025 would succeed. Surely the PP, which holds diametrically opposite views to the BJT, would not lend their support to Mr Anutin as prime minister? And yet it did.
But victory appears to be less about having the perfect hand, and more about playing perfectly the cards you have.
The BJT has made full use of the border conflict to amplify its national security credentials. It took advantage of Pheu Thai’s mishandling of the issue and the PP’s reputation for criticising the military, which is still a powerful institution and has enjoyed a surge in public support amid the border conflict.
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