“ WTF” was how a journalist colleague from another news outlet reacted on Facebook regarding the news and photo of Pheu Thai Party leaders, led by its new party leader Julapun Amornvivat, carrying a bouquet of flowers with a card from former PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra to congratulate arch anti-Thaksin Shinawatra former yellowshirt co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul on his birthday at his residence on Friday, November 7, 2025.
There is nothing cryptic about it. Basically, the leaders of Pheu Thai paying respects to Sondhi is a sign of desperation. The party must now rely on Sondhi to help attack PM Anutin Charnvirakul and the main opposition People’s Party.
Sondhi has been doing just that on his influential Facebook LIVE, and the Pheu Thai Party leadership must have calculated that PT supporters won’t abandon them, although they may worry about facing the same fate as the Democrat Party when they lost much of its support from the voters when they made a U-turn and joined the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration years ago.
This is why for the past two days, we have been seeing key Pheu Thai figures defending the controversial, if not scandalous move, in an attempt to ensure that redshirt Pheu Thai supporters will not get too upset or abandon them.
Former redshirt co-leader Korkaew Pikulthong, a party-list MP for the Pheu Thai Party, posted a message yesterday regarding the case, stating:
”Many democracy fighters might disagree. Many might not be able to accept it wholeheartedly. But I must ask directly: Is this act of extending friendship—turning an enemy into a supporter—good for the democratic side?
“We cannot change the past, but by drawing people who were once enemies to stand and support the democratic side in large numbers, I believe we might be able to change the future.”
He added that the conservative faction has always held superior power, thus suggesting that a change of strategy is imperative.
“Whenever the conservative faction sees democracy beginning to blossom, which might affect their group’s power and interests, the democratic faction will be dealt with in any way possible, as we have seen repeatedly over the past 20 years,” Korkaew added.
“Coups d’état by the military, independent organisations removing the Prime Minister, dissolving political parties, fabricating various charges and prosecuting politicians, using mass protests, using all forms of media to slander and defame, fabricating lawsuits to stop people’s movements or make them switch sides, using bribes to make leaders switch sides or reduce solidarity.”
In case you are not convinced, yesterday the most influential defender of the Pheu Thai Party and Thaksin Shinawatra, known as Kam Phaka, wrote to me on X that it was nothing more than a routine visit to congratulate Sondhi as founder of Manager Media Group, which was established on his birthday, November 7.
When I asked Kam Phaka, who famously credited Sondhi with creating the “Ghost of Thaksin” and using Thaksin as a bogey man to mobilise royalist yellowdhirts and later on multi-colour shirts in massive protests against Thaksin, which led to two military coups in 2006 and 2014 and more, as to why the congratulatory visit happened this year and not over the previous many years and whether they have conveniently forgotten that Sondhi was the supreme leader of the anti-Thaksin yellowshirt People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), Kam Phaka replied:
”They went to congratulate the Manager Group media (MGR Media Group), not really the individual person [Sondhi].
When Prime Minister Srettha was in office, Sondhi’s son brought a white buffalo to an event to show it off at the Government House.
For the past 20 years, there was a period of ‘waging war’ [politically], and they probably wouldn’t have gone, as they were about to kill or severely harm each other.
“Today, the Pheu Thai Party is sufficiently secure and has much more luxury and self-esteem than before. They are now able to go congratulate anyone.”
I will leave it to the readers to judge.
To this writer, for far too long, politicians and political demagogues have sowed the seeds of political hatred. It led to many incidents of political violence and deaths and the manipulation of their passionate and committed supporters as political pawns.
Perhaps it’s time to be a less passionate supporter of Thai political parties—not just Pheu Thai, but People’s Party and all the rest—and maintain a strictly contractual relationship instead of allowing them to lead you by the nose. They are not idols but just politicians.
Today, key redshirt leaders, demagogues and apologists speak the language of reconciliation and tell their followers to look toward the future and not think about the painful past, following the HBD well-wishing to Sondhi. They speak about seeking more allies instead of pushing those with different political views away and treating them as enemies. If the leaders of the redshirt movement, as well as those of other colours, had spoken this way instead of using the language of political hatred for two decades, over 100 lives from all sides could have been spared.
Over the past two decades, when they were busy stirring up political hatred, treating Thai politics as a zero-sum game, as a battle for annihilation, it was so toxic: ‘You and I are enemies, we will never reconcile. Many people in the rallies of all colours fought and died.
Now, they’re suddenly flocking to wish Sondhi a Happy Birthday.
Truth be told, the deep state was forced to use the Pheu Thai Party to block the People’s Party (previously known as Move Forward Party) from forming the government power. Now that the Pheu Thai is a spent force in the eyes of the deep state and ousted by the Constitutional Court, the party is desperately ‘forced’ to rethink and seek help and try to forge an alliance with Sondhi who has been openly critical of PM Anutin and the People’s Party. The enemy of my enemies is my friend even if he was also my enemy before.
And these Pheu Thai leaders and their apologists are essentially telling their supporters “let’s leave the past in the past and look towards the future.”
In the end, those who were killed, maimed, or lost their loved ones were little more than political pawns. And here lies the tragedy of the new twist of Thai politics unfolding before our eyes.