Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul dissolved parliament, setting the stage for an early election. Bloomberg's Ramsey Al-Rikabi has the latest.

Bangkok

Thailand's prime minister dissolved parliament earlier than planned, prompting an early election amid an ongoing border conflict with Cambodia that has resulted in casualties on both sides. The decision was influenced by pressure from the minority coalition partner, the People's Party, after the prime minister backtracked on promised constitutional amendments.

The royal court has approved the dissolution, and the election commission is expected to set an election date within 45 to 60 days. The upcoming election will see the reformist People's Party, which has faced obstacles from the political establishment, competing against the ruling party, with both sides influenced by the nationalist fervor surrounding the border dispute.

Thailand heads for election as PM dissolves parliament

Thailand is heading for an early election after the Thai prime minister dissolved parliament late on Thursday. It comes amid a border conflict with Cambodia that's seen multiple casualties on both sides. Bloomberg's team leader for Southeast Asia and economics and government, Ramzi Al-Rukabi, joins us from Bangkok. We just have some crossing lines on the terminal, essentially saying the prime minister, Newton, does not necessarily see an impact of that dissolution having an impact on the border spat that is happening with Cambodia. Give us the latest update on the ramifications of this move by the prime minister. Hi. Good morning, folks. Yeah, so late last night the prime minister dissolved parliament, which was a bit of a surprise move. He had planned to do this a little bit later, but he felt a bit of heat. Just as some background, he's got a minority party that's backing him, the People's Party, which is more popular than his own. Now to become the prime minister, he had guaranteed them that he would help amend the constitution. He backtracked on that. They threatened a no-confidence vote, and so he decided to go early with elections. Now one of the reasons why he's in a bit of a good position to do that is, unfortunately, because of the border clash with Cambodia. That has stirred up a lot of nationalist fervor. He's tried to project an image of being very strong on the border, not giving an inch, even pushing back against pressure from the U.S. and Donald Trump to stop fighting on the border. His predecessor, if you remember, was ousted because she bungled how the border clash was managed. So at this point, he sees pressure coming from his partners in parliament. He dissolves, calls elections, and hopes that this war that he's fighting gives him the nationalist edge to maybe expand his coalition and then get a fresh mandate. Yeah, exactly. We have seen that strong nationalist sentiment off the back of this border clash. So what is the outlook in terms of the timing here and the next steps, essentially? Yeah, so the royal court has approved the dissolution of parliament and now it goes to the election commission to decide when they will do it. I believe that needs to be between 45 to 60 days. So that puts us somewhere between late January and, say, like the first week or so of February. So from now until then, obviously, Anitin is going to get rolling on the campaign trail. The People's Party this time has three candidates that it could field. Again, it has been more popular in the past than his party. It's one of the most popular, but because the reforms it's called for, particularly around the royal insult laws and around the constitution, the so-called establishment in Thailand has been able to more or less kneecap that party, has had its candidates thrown out, has had them kicked out of politics, has had charges brought against them to sort of keep those reforms from happening. So it'll be an interesting next two months to see how a very popular party calling for reforms takes on a pretty well-established establishment party that has been pretty strong against its neighbor in this war.

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