Daughter of Thailand’s former divisive leader becomes country’s new PM

Bangkok: The daughter of billionaire and highly influential political figure Thaksin Shinawatra will become Thailand’s youngest-ever prime minister and the third from her close family to hold the office after a fast debate and vote in the nation’s parliament.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 37, was put forward on Friday by the governing coalition headed by her father’s Pheu Thai Party, surprising many pundits who suspected he wished to shield her, for now, from the poisoned chalice of high office in a political system frequently manipulated by the royalist and military establishment.

Leader of the Pheu Thai Party Paetongtarn Shinawatra arrives at the party’s headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.Credit: AP

The vote was triggered by Wednesday’s surprise sacking of Pheu Thai prime minister Srettha Thavisin by the Constitutional Court, which ruled five to four that his gifting of a cabinet post to a man who had spent time in jail was a serious ethical breach.

Paetongtarn already leads Pheu Thai, but the position is not an elected office. The party won the second most seats at last year’s election and put forward Srettha for prime minister when Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of the winning Move Forward Party, was blocked by military-appointed senators, whose terms and powers to vote on the prime minister have since expired.

In a tumultuous week in Thai politics, Move Forward was dissolved by the same court last Wednesday after the judges determined that the party’s intention to loosen strict laws that criminalise criticism of the monarchy was tantamount to insurrection. It has quickly regrouped as the People’s Party.

Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, recently returned to Thailand after years of exile and is widely seen as Pheu Thai’s de facto leader. Leading a popular, anti-establishment movement that has regularly clashed violently with royalists, Thaksin in 2001 became the first Thai politician to win an overall majority of seats. He was ousted by a military coup in 2006 but has remained a key figure in Thai politics, even from abroad.

Former leader of Move Forward Party Pita Limjaroenrat (centre) shakes hand with his supporters in Bangkok.Credit: AP

Paetongtarn’s aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra, became prime minister in 2011 but three years later she too was forced out amid protests, court rulings and another military coup. Yingluck’s and Thaksin’s brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, also briefly served as prime minister in 2008 until the Constitutional Court dissolved his party.

The new prime minister’s public entry into politics was in 2021 when Pheu Thai announced she would lead an inclusion advisory committee. She was named one of its three prime ministerial candidates before last year’s polls.

Thailand’s rules required that anyone put forward to be the prime minister on Friday had to have been a candidate for the job last year. With Srettha gone, that left Paetongtarn and 75-year-old Chaikasem Nitisiri, who is said to be in ill health, from Pheu Thai’s ranks. The coalition decided not to put forward the ambitious Anutin Charnvirakul, the leader of the Bhumjaithai Party, and who until Thursday night was among the favourites.

“She’s got some business background, but she’s not the same sort of high-calibre executive that her aunt in Yingluck was,” Australian National University senior lecturer Greg Raymond told this masthead.

“In interviews, I’ve seen her mention that she was quite aware of her own inexperience politically. She would be relying heavily on advisers, and I think it would be fairly unsurprising if one of those key advisers was her dad.

“It’s clear that Pheu Thai is already becoming increasingly reliant on support from the conservative military proxy parties, and that means that policy wise they’re probably going to be less inclined to be adventurous. At the same time, they’re facing an uphill battle to be competitive at the next election … I think they might be grasping at straws, personally.”

Until the emergence of Move Forward, Pheu Thai and its predecessor parties had won all national elections since 2001 with populist policies pledging to solve economic problems and bridge income inequality.

“The Pheu Thai party room would be thinking the Shinawatra name is still relatively powerful,” Raymond said.

“It’s declined in the last four or five years, particularly with the rise of [reformist] Move Forward and [predecessor] Future Forward – and it’s been damaged badly by going into this coalition with military proxy parties.

“But the Shinawatra brand sort of carries this aura of good economic management. Thaksin was quite a good economic manager, very creative, very hard driving, and he brought unprecedented wealth distribution policies.”

With AP

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