Junta turns up the heat as young voters, Western diplomats back fresh face

BANGKOK — A billionaire who led his new party to unexpected wins in last month’s general elections is rapidly becoming the symbol of the Thai pro-democracy movement, despite the ruling junta’s efforts to curb the charismatic young firebrand.

Thanathorn Juangroongruankit, the 40-year-old leader of the progressive Future Forward Party, is facing mounting legal troubles and has been threatened verbally before and after the March 24 elections, the first in five years of military rule.

But rather than crumble or flee abroad in the face of what a leading Thai human rights activist describes as “dirty tricks,” Thanathorn has stood his ground against the country’s powerful army chief, ultra-royalists and officials from supposedly independent bodies.

Heir to an auto parts maker, Thanathorn continues to defy authorities, boosting the stature of his party, which won 81 parliamentary seats according to the initial vote count. The tally placed the FFP third in the poll, exceeding projections by even optimistic Thai insiders and watchful military officials, who had expected the untested party to garner about 30 seats.

According to diplomatic sources, Western embassies in Bangkok are closely monitoring the regime’s treatment of Thanathorn and his party to gauge the sincerity of the junta’s pledge of a return to democracy after the 2014 coup. This was clearly evident on Apr. 6 when Western diplomats showed up en masse to witness Thanathorn hear sedition charges read against him by the Bangkok police stemming from a 2015 complaint.

The diplomatic presence included officials from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and the U.S. Human rights representatives from the European Union and United Nations were also on hand.

The junta bristles at the political leverage that Thanathorn gains from being in the world spotlight. “This could not happen in their countries, but they did it in ours,” Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai told reporters on Tuesday. “We will ask them to cooperate and not do that again. It was against the diplomatic protocols of the United Nations.”

But analysts say that even with the exposure, Thanathorn could still be convicted, putting Thailand in the same league as neighboring Myanmar during its own military