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Anutin Charnvirakul is Thailand’s new prime minister after breezing through a parliamentary vote, trouncing the candidate of the Shinawatra family’s once-dominant ruling party to end a week of chaos and political deadlock.
With the decisive backing of the opposition, Anutin easily passed more than half of the lower house votes required to become premier on Friday, capping days of drama during which he outmanoeuvred the most successful political party in Thailand’s history.
Anutin has been a mainstay in Thai politics throughout years of turmoil, positioning his Bhumjaithai party between warring elites embroiled in an intractable power struggle and guaranteeing its place in a succession of coalition governments.
Anutin did not speak to the house before the vote.
His defeat of rival contender Chaikasem Nitisiri is a humiliation for the ruling Pheu Thai party, the once unstoppable populist juggernaut of influential billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra.
Shinawatra left Thailand late on Thursday for Dubai, where he spent the bulk of his 15 years in self-imposed exile to avoid a jail term for abuse of power and conflicts of interest while he was prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
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.
After a failed attempt to dissolve the house to stymie Anutin, Pheu Thai made another last-ditch attempt to undermine his alliance on Thursday, announcing it would nominate 77-year-old former attorney-general Chaikasem to contest the prime ministerial vote, with a promise to call a snap election immediately if elected.
Anutin’s win in Friday’s house vote came as a result of a pact with the progressive opposition People’s Party, the largest force in parliament, which he seduced with a promise to hold a referendum on amending the constitution and calling 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.
As a staunch royalist, Anutin is considered a conservative, although he made a name for himself by leading a successful campaign to decriminalise 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.
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.
