Former Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has been chosen as Thailand’s 32nd prime minister by the country’s House of Representatives, a week after the court-ordered removal of his predecessor, Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
In a vote chaired by House Speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, a total of 311 members of the House of Representatives voted for Anutin, the head of the conservative Bhumjaithai party, putting him over the 224 votes required. The Pheu Thai party, which leads the outgoing coalition, nominated Chaikasem Nitisiri, a former attorney general and justice minister, who garnered only 152 votes. A further 27 members abstained.
Anutin was elected with the support of the opposition People’s Party. He is set to form a minority government after he is sworn in by King Vajiralongkorn in the coming days.
Anutin’s selection brings to an end a political deadlock that began on August 29, when the Constitutional Court removed Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of the influential former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, from office. The court ruled that the 39-year-old committed a serious ethical violation during a phone call with Cambodia’s influential former leader Hun Sen in June, which was later leaked to the press.
Since then, the Pheu Thai government has struggled to shore up its shaky coalition and secure the support necessary to nominate a prime minister to replace Paetongtarn. Its main rival was Bhumjaithai, a conservative party that withdrew from its coalition following the leak of the Paetongtarn-Hun Sen call.
In the politicking that has taken place in the week since Paetongtarn’s removal, both parties have competed for the support of the progressive People’s Party, the successor to the since-dissolved Move Forward Party (MFP), which holds more seats in the House – 143 out of 492 – than any other party. To take advantage of its leverage, People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut promised to support the nomination of a prime minister from any party that was willing to amend the military-drafted 2017 Constitution (or draw up a new one) and dissolve parliament within four months, paving the way to a snap election sometime in early 2026. At the same time, the People’s Party said that it would remain in opposition.
Both Pheu Thai and Bhumjaithai agreed to Natthaphong’s terms, but on Wednesday, the People’s Party announced that it would support Anutin, an ambitious leader who is ideologically far removed from the People’s Party’s progressive politics. Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai attempted to thwart the formation of a new government by moving to dissolve parliament immediately, but the attempt was rebuffed by the Privy Council. The party then offered to dissolve parliament immediately if the People’s Party supported its candidate, Chaikasem Nitisiri, in today’s vote.
Pheu Thai’s failure to stave off the outcome of the vote is a sign of the waning power of the electoral powerhouse, which won six elections prior to 2023, but has been tainted by the deal it made with conservative parties after the 2023 election, while being outflanked by a more genuinely progressive challenger to its left.
Underscoring this impression, Thaksin Shinawatra, the party’s de facto leader, abruptly left the country for Singapore for health treatment late yesterday, after which his private jet changed course and flew to Dubai. Thaksin later said that an immigration delay in Bangkok had forced him to change his plans, but the timing of the flight raised eyebrows. On September 9, the Supreme Court is set to hand down its verdict in a case involving Thaksin’s prolonged hospital stay in lieu of prison following his return to Thailand in 2023, which could potentially result in jail time.
Whether or not Thaksin returns for the court ruling, as he has promised to do, increasing numbers of political observers are wondering whether his family’s long reign of influence in Thai politics is coming to an end. As Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told Reuters, “For all intents and purposes, the Shinawatra family is politically spent.”
While the immediate deadlock has been broken, the outlook for Thai politics remains cloudy, with a chance of storms. The first question is whether Anutin will accept his appointed role as interim prime minister, and uphold his side of the bargain with the People’s Party by initiating an effort to amend the constitution and dissolving parliament. The second is whether the People’s Party will suffer its own reputational cost for supporting Anutin, however pragmatically. The decision has already been condemned by prominent members of the progressive movement, who have expressed concerns that the party will be outplayed by Bhumjaithai.
However, the party at least deserves credit for attempting to resolve the fundamental issue that lies at the heart of Thailand’s perpetual political crises: the desire by the conservative elites clustered around the military and the Royal Palace to set tight limits on what outcomes Thai democratic system can produce. As such, there is a good chance that a new election, should it happen early next year, will merely be the beginning of the old cycle of political dysfunction anew.
After the last election in 2023, despite the MFP winning the most seats of any party, the establishment pulled out all the stops to prevent it from forming government and enacting its progressive, and in some respects radical, policy platform. Military-appointed senators blocked the MFP’s initial attempt to nominate a prime minister, and then went so far as to bury the hatchet (albeit temporarily) with Thaksin and Pheu Thai, with whom they had been at political war with since the early 2000s.
However, the Senate’s veto expired last year, and a similar election result to 2023 would put the People’s Party in a position to form government. Whether the conservative establishment would permit the People’s Party to take office, let alone enact policies aimed at dismantling the structural privileges that justify the country’s lopsided concentrations of power, including even minor abridgements to the controversial law protecting the monarchy, remains unlikely. On the contrary, it all but guarantees more judicial interventions, and possibly even military ones, in Thailand’s politics, whenever an election is held and whatever result it produces.