BANGKOK – Thai lawmakers are assembled on Friday to appoint a new prime minister, amid major parties proposing to promptly dissolve Parliament and call for new elections to resolve the nation’s political turmoil.
In accordance with Thailand’s constitutional guidelines, only five individuals, originally nominated during the 2023 general election, are qualified for the position. Anutin Charnvirakul, the head of the Bhumjaithai Party, appears to be the leading candidate.
The Constitutional Court recently disqualified Paetongtarn Shinawatra of the Pheu Thai Party from becoming prime minister due to a breach of ethics involving a phone conversation with Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen regarding disputes over border claims.
The dispute erupted into a deadly five-day armed conflict in July.
The Pheu Thai Party, which is currently at the helm of a caretaker government, attempted to dissolve Parliament earlier this week, but their proposal was turned down by the king’s Privy Council, as noted by the acting prime minister.
On Thursday, the party announced it would put forward Chaikasem Nitisiri, the former Attorney General and Justice Minister, as the sole remaining candidate for Friday’s vote. Chaikasem has pledged to dissolve the house immediately following his inaugural address, should he be elected.
Anutin from Bhumjaithai indicated that he has already garnered 146 votes from his party and their allies, while the People’s Party declared that its 143 members will also back him, collectively surpassing the requisite 247 majority from the current 492 House members.
The 58-year-old Anutin had served in the Pheu Thai-led coalition government that took power in 2023 until July, 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 in the process of 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.
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