Thai lawmakers to vote for a new prime minister as candidates promise an early election

Thai lawmakers met to select a new prime minister Friday as major parties made competing promises to soon dissolve Parliament and call an election as a way to resolve the country’s political crisis.

Only five candidates, nominated during the last general election in 2023, are eligible under Thailand’s constitutional rules. Anutin Charnvirakul, leader of the Bhumjaithai Party, seemed the most likely candidate to secure the job.

The Constitutional Court last week dismissed Paetongtarn Shinawatra as prime minister for breaching ethics laws in a phone call with Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen about tensions over competing claims along their border.

The dispute erupted into a deadly five-day armed conflict in July.

Anutin and Pheu Thai Party candidate Chaikasem Nitisiri were officially nominated for the vote. They would need at least 247 votes to win the House majority.

Pheu Thai, currently leading a caretaker government, attempted to dissolve Parliament on Tuesday, but the acting prime minister said their request was rejected by the king’s Privy Council.

Former Attorney General and Justice Minister Chaikasem said Thursday that if he is elected, he will dissolve the house as soon as he delivers his inaugural speech to Parliament.

Anutin said he has secured 146 votes from his own party and its allies, while the People’s Party said its 143 lawmakers will also support him, easily exceeding the 247 majority he needs out of the 492 House members currently serving.

The 58-year-old Anutin had served in the Pheu Thai-led coalition government that took power in 2023 and before that in the military-backed but elected government under former Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

Anutin is best known for successfully lobbying for the decriminalization of cannabis, a policy that is now being more strictly regulated for medical purposes.

He also played a high-profile role as health minister during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was accused of tardiness in obtaining adequate vaccine supplies to fight the virus.

If Anutin is successful, his party has promised to dissolve Parliament within four months in exchange for support from the People’s Party. 

That party’s leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, said it would remain in the opposition, leaving the new government potentially a minority one.

The People’s Party also said that an Anutin-led government would have to commit to organizing a referendum on the drafting of a new constitution by an elected constituent assembly. 

The party has long sought changes to the constitution — which was imposed during a military government — to make it more democratic.

The People’s Party, then named the Move Forward Party, won the most seats in the 2023 election but was kept from power when a joint vote of the House and the Senate failed to approve its candidate for prime minister.

Senators, who were appointed by a military government and were strong supporters of Thailand’s royalist conservative establishment, voted against the progressive party because they opposed its policy of seeking reforms to the monarchy.

The Senate no longer holds the right to take part in the vote for prime minister.

After Move Forward was blocked from taking power, Pheu Thai had one of its candidates, real estate executive Srettha Thavisin, approved as prime minister to lead a coalition government. But he served just a year before the Constitutional Court dismissed him from office for ethical violations.

Srettha’s replacement Paetongtarn, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s daughter, also lasted just a year in office. 

But even before she was forced out, her government was greatly weakened when Anutin’s Bhumjaithai Party abandoned her coalition right after her controversial call in June with Cambodia’s Hun Sen.

Its withdrawal left Pheu Thai’s coalition with just a tiny and unstable majority in Parliament.

Source: AP

- Agencies