ASEANEWS HEADLINE | THAILAND: Thailand’s Pheu Thai nominates Paetongtarn Shinawatra for PM
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Pheu Thai party leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra joins hands with coalition party leaders at a press conference in Bangkok, Thailand. PHOTO: AFP
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Ms Paetongtarn Shinawatra is set to become Thailand’s youngest premier and only the second woman to lead the nation. PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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BANGKOK (AFP) – Thailand’s Pheu Thai party has chosen 37-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, as its candidate for prime minister, it announced yesterday, a day after a court dismissed the premier in an ethics case.
“We decide to nominate Paetongtarn Shinawatra,” party Secretary General Sorawong Thienthong told a press conference in Bangkok.
Lawmakers will vote today in Parliament – where Pheu Thai heads a governing coalition – on whether to approve Paetongtarn as prime minister.
Memento Maxima Digital Marketing“We are confident that the party and coalition parties will lead our country in helping with Thailand’s economic crisis,” Paetongtarn said after the announcement.
On Wednesday, Thailand’s Constitutional Court sacked premier Srettha Thavisin after ruling he had breached regulations by appointing a Cabinet minister with a criminal conviction, plunging the kingdom into fresh political uncertainty.
Pheu Thai – the electoral vehicle of one-time Manchester City owner Thaksin – is the largest member of a governing coalition of 11 parties that includes royalist and pro-military outfits who were once its bitter rivals.
The 37-year-old, who spent weeks at the hustings while visibly pregnant, delivered mixed results. Her Pheu Thai Party came in second in 2023’s election but cobbled together a ruling coalition after the vote winner was blocked by military-backed lawmakers.
Now, the daughter of the country’s most divisive but enduring politician, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, will attempt to secure the office her father and aunt once occupied, underlining her family’s central place in Thai politics.
On Aug 16, less than 48 hours after Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was dismissed by a court order, Ms Paetongtarn will seek parliamentary support to replace him.
If Ms Paetongtarn wins, she would become the youngest Thai prime minister and only the second woman to occupy the position, after her aunt Yingluck.
She would seek to beat another recurring theme for the Shinawatra family. The governments led by her father and aunt were toppled by the military in 2006 and 2014, respectively.
“The country has to move ahead,” Ms Paetongtarn, the youngest of Mr Thaksin’s three children, told reporters after winning Pheu Thai’s nomination.
“We are determined, together, and we will push the country forward.”
Mr Thaksin himself returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in self-imposed exile, just as Pheu Thai – the latest political vehicle of the former telecom tycoon – forged an alliance with military-backed parties to form a government.
It was an unlikely coming together of the populist Pheu Thai and the conservative-royalist establishment that have battled for supremacy in the country of 66 million people for over two decades, sometimes leading to coups and bouts of civil unrest.
Mr Srettha was the fourth premier of a Thaksin-backed political party to be removed by a court ruling, a sign of the deep divide that still persists.
Into this breach will step an untested Ms Paetongtarn, who has never held an elected government position and has no administrative experience.
“She will be under scrutiny. She will be under a lot of pressure,” said Mr Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.
“She will have to rely on her father.”
Srettha is the party’s third prime minister to be kicked out by the Constitutional Court, and is leaving office after less than a year.
Thai politics has endured two decades of chronic instability marked by coups, street protests and court orders – much of it fuelled by the long-running battle by the military and pro-royalist establishment against progressive parties linked to their bete noire Thaksin.
The ex-premier returned to Thailand last August from 15 years in self-exile on the same day Srettha took power in an alliance with pro-military parties previously staunchly opposed to Thaksin and his followers.
The timing seemed to suggest a truce in the long-standing feud as both sides sought to see off the threat posed by the newer Move Forward Party (MFP), which won the popular vote in last year’s election.
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