Thailand’s Pita to return to Harvard following 10-year political ban

BANGKOK - Popular Thai politician Pita Limjaroenrat is returning to Harvard University, where he will take up a fellowship and share his lessons from a period of political turmoil that saw his party win a general election, only to be disbanded a year later. 

The 43-year-old former leader of the now-disbanded Move Forward Party will become a Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, from where he graduated 13 years ago. During the fellowship, which is expected to last two semesters, Mr Pita plans to mentor the next generation of future leaders.

Mr Pita, who was blocked by the conservative establishment from becoming Thailand’s prime minister in 2023, said he was inspired by former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern in taking up the dual fellowships at the school of public policy and government. He was handed a 10-year ban from politics earlier in August by the Constitutional Court, which also dissolved his party. 

“I had a premature death in my political career,” Mr Pita said in an interview in Bangkok. “We won the election, but we got blocked by military-linked senators and we got banned by the military-linked Constitutional Court.” 

Mr Pita’s Move Forward was disbanded after it rattled the country’s conservative and military-backed groups by winning the most number of parliamentary seats in the general election in 2023. Mr Pita’s bid to form a government in the company of other pro-democracy groups was thwarted by pro-royalist parties, which saw his reformist agendas – including a campaign to amend a law against royal defamation – as a threat. 

The government that eventually emerged was out of an unwieldy alliance between the conservative establishment and Pheu Thai Party, backed by former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. The deal allowed the pro-military and conservative groups to stay in power and their arch-rival Thaksin to return to Thailand from 15 years of self-imposed exile after he fled corruption charges in 2008. 

Mr Thaksin’s youngest daughter, Ms Paetongtarn Shinawatra, became prime minister last week after the charter court dismissed her predecessor Srettha Thavisin in an ethics violation case.

Mr Pita said: “It’s almost like a merry-go-round politics. You get dizzy and a headache, and you don’t know who’s operating the machine.” 

During the fellowship, Mr Pita plans to split his time between Boston and Bangkok, where his daughter still goes to school. He also plans to help the People’s Party – the new home for Move Forward’s lawmakers – campaign as a regular Thai citizen. 

While the “forced” break from Thai politics will allow him to think about his next steps, Mr Pita still hopes to return to the political arena after the ban expires, potentially as a prime ministerial candidate. 

In the meantime, he has more legal hurdles to face. He is among more than 40 former Move Forward lawmakers under probe by the National Anti-Corruption Commission for their role in backing an amendment of the royal insult law. If found guilty, he faces a lifetime ban from politics, which he dubbed as an effort to “exterminate” the group of reformist politicians. 

“You can never underestimate the resistance to change,” Mr Pita said. “Now, Thailand doesn’t want me as a player, so I had to become a coach.” BLOOMBERG