Thailand’s Pheu Thai party chooses Paetongtarn Shinawatra as PM candidate

“We decide to nominate Paetongtarn Shinawatra,” party secretary general Sorawong Thienthong told a press conference in Bangkok.

Lawmakers will vote Friday in parliament — where Pheu Thai heads a governing coalition — on whether to approve Paetongtarn as prime minister.

“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.

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 tycoon 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.

It was later blocked from forming a government.

Paetongtarn was chosen ahead of Pheu Thai stalwart Chaikasem Nitisiri, 75.

The move showed “Pheu Thai’s strategy to stand by the youth movement”, political analyst Yuttaporn Issarachai told AFP.

But he said it would be difficult to “move on from the conservative and military influence” that has dominated Thai politics for decades.

Court cases

The case against Srettha was brought by 40 former senators appointed by the military junta that ousted an elected Pheu Thai government in a 2014 coup.

The senate also played a crucial role in blocking the MFP after last year’s elections.

Senators alarmed by MFP’s pledges to reform lese majeste laws and break up powerful business monopolies refused to endorse its then-leader Pita Limjaroenrat as prime minister, and the party was forced into opposition.

The top court last week dissolved the MFP and banned Pita and its main officials from politics for 10 years.

Srettha, meanwhile, was dismissed over the appointment of Pichit Chuenban, a former lawyer associated with Thaksin.

Pichit, sentenced to six months in jail in 2008 for a graft-related offence, quit the cabinet after the case was filed in a bid to save Srettha but the court pressed ahead with the case.