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Anutin Charnvirakul has become Thailand’s newest prime minister following a smooth parliamentary vote, overcoming the candidate of the Shinawatra family’s previously dominant party to put an end to a week marked by turmoil and political gridlock.
Garnering significant support from the opposition, Anutin easily secured more than half of the required lower house votes to take on the premier role on Friday. This concluded a dramatic period during which he outmaneuvered Thailand’s most successful political party.
Anutin, known for his shrewd deal-making, has been a fixture in Thai politics amid years marked by unrest, strategically positioning his Bhumjaithai party among clashing elites entangled in a persistent power struggle and ensuring its involvement in successive coalition governments.
Anutin remained silent in the house before the vote.
When questioned upon his arrival at parliament about seeking divine aid, he responded, “I prayed to my parents.”
His victory over contender Chaikasem Nitisiri was a significant setback for the ruling Pheu Thai party, the former powerhouse led by influential billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin recently departed Thailand for Dubai, where he spent much of his 15-year self-imposed exile.
Pheu Thai’s crisis was triggered back in June by Anutin’s withdrawal from its alliance, which left the coalition government clinging to power with a razor-thin majority amid protests and plummeting popularity.
The hammer blow was last week’s dismissal by the Constitutional Court of Thaksin’s daughter and protege Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the sixth prime minister from or backed by the Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or judiciary.
Anutin’s triumph in Friday’s parliamentary vote was the result of a pact with the progressive opposition People’s Party, the largest parliamentary force, which he successfully persuaded by promising to hold a referendum on constitutional amendments and to call an election within four months.
Who is Anutin Charnvirakul?
A political veteran who once ran his family’s construction firm, 58-year-old Anutin is a former deputy premier, interior minister and health minister who served as Thailand’s COVID-19 tsar.
Though a staunch royalist and conservative, Anutin gained recognition for leading a successful campaign to decriminalize cannabis in Thailand.
Anutin will lead a minority government, which the People’s Party will not join, and take the helm of a country with an economy struggling from weak consumption, tight lending and soaring levels of household debt.
His expedited rise to the premiership was tied to the political reckoning of powerbroker Thaksin and decline of Pheu Thai, which won five of the past six elections but has haemorrhaged support among working classes once wooed by its raft of populist giveaways.
The tycoon’s unannounced departure from Thailand on his private jet came after his party failed in desperate bids to dissolve the house and undermine Anutin’s bloc.
A court ruling that could see Thaksin jailed is set for next week.
Thaksin made a vaunted homecoming from Dubai in 2023 to serve an eight-year sentence for abuse of power and conflicts of interest, but on his first night in prison, he was transferred to the VIP wing of a hospital on medical grounds.
His sentence was commuted to a year by the king and he was released on parole after six months in detention.
The Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday if Thaksin’s hospital stint counts as time served. If not, it could send him back to jail.
In a post on X, Thaksin said he was in Dubai for a medical check-up and to see old friends, and he would be back in Thailand to attend court next week.
