Leader of Pheu Thai Party, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, wave before a press conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (AP)
BANGKOK – Thailand’s Parliament on Friday started voting whether to approve the daughter of the divisive former leader Thaksin Shinawatra as the new prime minister, two days after a court removed the last one over an ethics violation.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 37, is the leader of the Pheu Thai party and the sole nominee. She does not hold an elected office, which the law doesn’t require of prime ministerial candidates. The parliament also does not require her to be present at the vote.
If Paetongtarn is approved in Parliament’s vote, she will become Thailand’s second female prime minister and the country’s third leader from the Shinawatra family, after her father and her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra. She will also become the country’s youngest leader.
Thaksin was the first Thai politician ever to win an overall majority of seats. He is one of Thailand’s most popular but divisive political figures and was ousted by a military coup in 2006. He is widely seen as a de facto leader of Pheu Thai, the latest in a string of parties linked to him. His residual popularity and influence is a factor behind the political support for Paetongtarn.
When Paetongtarn was on the campaign trail for Pheu Thai, she acknowledged her family ties but insisted she was not just her father’s proxy.
“It’s not the shadow of my dad. I am my dad’s daughter, always and forever, but I have my own decisions,” she told a reporter.
However, her father’s shadow is too big to be dismissed and her work will not be easy with him continuing to call political shots for Pheu Thai, said Petra Alderman, a political research fellow at England’s University of Birmingham.
“Thaksin was a political force to reckon with, but he was also a liability,” she said, “He has a tendency to overplay his political hand, so serving in his shadow has never been easy.”
Paetongtarn’s nomination followed the removal of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday after less than a year in office. The Constitutional Court found him guilty of a serious ethical breach regarding his appointment of a Cabinet member who was jailed in connection with an alleged bribery attempt.
It was the second major ruling in a week to shake Thai politics. The same court last week dissolved the progressive Move Forward party, which won last year’s general election but was blocked from taking power. The party has already regrouped as the People’s Party.
Pheu Thai and its predecessors had won all national elections since 2001, with core populist policies pledging to solve economic problems and bridge income equality, until it lost to the reformist Move Forward in 2023. It, however, was given a chance to form a government after Move Forward was blocked from taking power by the previous Senate, a military-appointed body.
Move Forward was excluded from the coalition by Pheu Thai, which went on to join hands with parties affiliated with the military government that ousted it in a coup. The move drew criticism from some of its supporters but party officials say it was necessary to break the deadlock and start reconciliation after decades of deep political divisions.
Thaksin returned to Thailand last year after years in exile in what was interpreted as part of a political bargain between Pheu Thai and their longstanding rivals in the conservative establishment to stop Move Forward Party from forming a government.
The former senators were given special power to veto a prime ministerial candidate by the constitution adopted in 2017 under a military government. However, that power expired when their term ended in May. New members of the Senate, selected in a convoluted process last month, do not retain the veto.
A candidate now needs just a majority from the lower house, or at least 247 votes. The current 11 party-coalition led by Pheu Thai now has 314 lawmakers in the lower house, and they have declared their unanimous support for Paetongtarn.
The coalition under the leadership of Paetongtarn could strengthen their unity because Paetongtarn possesses something that Srettha does not — a direct line to her powerful father who has the final say — said Napon Jatusripitak, a political science researcher at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
“In a strange way, it creates a clear chain of command and curbs factionalism,” he said. “Paetongtarn will be given clear jurisdictions on where she can exercise her own agency and where it is a matter between her father and the coalition members.”
With Move Forward dissolved and the party’s only prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat banned from political activities, Napon believes it’s the time that the rest of major political parties resume a “game of musical chairs” of the premiership race that has been put on hold “with an agreement to share power, regardless of who becomes the prime minister.”
“Most importantly, the overarching goal remains the same: to keep the music playing and exclude the reformists from power,” he said.