Published: 02:23 PM, 18 November 2025
Thailand’s Anutin Faces No-Confidence Threat as Scam Scandals Deepen
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visits soldiers at the 11th Infantry Battalion on Tuesday in Phu Makua, Kantharalak district, Si Sa Ket province, after a landmine blast injured four Thai soldiers early this week. / Thai Government House
Amid the drumbeats of military conflict with Cambodia, Thailand’s political environment is evidently unruly and unsettled. The minority government of Anutin Charnvirakul, the third prime minister from the third largest-winning party since the latest national election in May 2023, is hard-pressed to stay in office beyond the four-month “Memorandum of Agreement” between his Bhumjaithai Party (BJT) and the People’s Party (PP), the largest camp in the national assembly.
As pressure mounts from a planned no-confidence motion in December and explosive corruption allegations against cabinet members related to scam networks and cyberfraud, Anutin may be forced to bring forward the election from the anticipated end of March next year, despite his playing up nationalism over the Thai-Cambodian border dispute.
Following the dissolution of the PP’s predecessor, the Move Forward Party, and the removal of the second-largest poll winner, Pheu Thai Party’s Srettha Thavisin, from the premiership in August 2023 and Paetongtarn Shinawatra a year later, Anutin took the helm of a stopgap administration. Despite the four-month MoA with PP, the Anutin cabinet comprising old-style unsavory politicians from provincial patronage networks appeared set to stay in public office where they are able to gain from pork-barrelling projects ahead of the next poll, which is due by May 2027.
While the finance, commerce, and energy portfolios were filled by technocrats, the lion’s share of cabinet posts went to the Anutin-led BJT, overseen by party patriarch Newin Chidchob, along with coalition allies the Klatham and United Thai Nation parties. The BJT-PP deal was that Anutin would steer parliamentary proceedings and see through charter amendments to pave the way for a new constitution by holding a referendum on its drafting structure concurrently at the next poll.
But as he settled into the premiership, the going got tough quickly for Anutin. While a wide array of his cabinet ministers was previously embroiled in scandals, including Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Thamanat Prompow’s earlier conviction and jail term in Australia on drug-trafficking charges, allegations of his linkages with cyber-crimes and scam center networks based in Cambodia put Anutin on the back foot. As more facts surrounding the labyrinthine cross-border multibillion-dollar transnational criminal ring surfaced, more questions went unanswered. Deputy Finance Minister Vorapak Tanyawong had to resign unceremoniously due to accusations of his link with BIC Bank in Cambodia, founded by controversial Cambodian businessman Yim Leak.
It turned out that the accusation against Vorapak was just the tip of the iceberg as a report of cyberfraud, human- and drug-trafficking and money-laundering among cyber-criminal networks became exposed. Chen Zhi of the Prince Group and Hun To of Huione Group were fingered as two of the leading masterminds of these scam networks, along with Benjamin Mauerberger, allegedly the key conduit among these criminal gangs. The US Treasury Department confiscated nearly US$15 billion of the Prince Group’s and Chen Zhi’s crypto and other financial assets on cyberfraud, human trafficking and money-laundering charges. The UK, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have similarly cracked down on them.
The allegation of a Thai connection to these obscure figures and business outfits appears wide and deep. For example, the Prince Group happened to rent a unit at Anutin’s family-owned Sino-Thai office building. Mauerberger’s photos with senior Thai officials made the rounds on social media. Despite declaring what comes across as a ceremonial “war” on scam networks, Anutin appears unenthusiastic in going after the criminal networks. As the Thai-Cambodian border conflict takes center stage, consumes attention and diverts headlines, Anutin may be hoping that the frenzy of nationalism at home will crowd out the scam crisis and yield electoral advantages when the poll takes place.
All the same, the Pheu Thai Party under new leader Julapun Amornvivat is on course to file a no-confidence motion when parliament reconvenes in December. The BJT has poached and accepted defecting MPs from other parties, but at under a hundred, its ranks are not enough to withstand a no-confidence onslaught unless PP and its 143 MPs stick to the MoA. But it will be difficult for PP to stand by BJT in view of the damning evidence of corruption and fraud from the scam crisis. Anutin has already hinted on several occasions that he will dissolve the Lower House if a no-confidence motion looms against his minority government without enough support. As he is constitutionally barred from calling a new election once the no-confidence motion takes effect, the prime minister may have to cut short his term.
The four-month timeline pins the Lower House dissolution on Jan. 31, with a new poll on March 29, but Anutin may now have to dissolve the assembly before its next session from Dec. 12. This would put the election date in February within the mandated 60-day window. To be sure, the ruling party is more prepared for polls in what is shaping up as a largely three-way race among the BJT, Pheu Thai and PP.
To be sure, the Anutin government has rolled out a sizeable tax relief program and “half-half” subsidy measures for low-income earners who could purchase basic goods at half price with the government picking up the remainder.
As soon as it took office, BJT recalled and reworked promotion lists of senior civil servants, placing its favorites and loyalists in key positions of authority for electoral advantages and supervision over provincial purse strings. It also put the two red-hot fraud cases of BJT collusion and manipulation of Senate elections, as well as encroachment of public land, on the legal back burner.
With Pheu Thai trying to regain its footing and the PP’s dilemma of whether to stick with the MoA for constitutional reform and therefore with the BJT or ditch the ruling party and potentially put off charter change due to the scam crisis, the BJT will likely rely on oversight agencies and its establishment backers to outmanouver PP and Pheu Thai in an effort to hold on to power after the poll. And if necessary, Anutin could also try to make use of a military clash at the Thai-Cambodian border to delay the election timetable and complicate the planned no-confidence motion.
Written by: Thitinan Pongsudhirak (The author is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University & visiting professor at the London School of Economics.)
>> Source: The Irrawaddy
