Conservative tycoon Anutin Charnvirakul is Thailand’s new prime minister

BANGKOK – Conservative tycoon Anutin Charnvirakul was on Sept 5 voted Thailand’s new prime minister, promising to restore order, at least for now, amid the chaos stirred by yet another power vacuum.

Mr Anutin, 58, breezed through a parliamentary vote, trouncing the candidate of the Shinawatra family’s once dominant Pheu Thai party, former justice minister Chaikasem Nitisiri.

With the decisive backing of the opposition, Mr Anutin easily passed the threshold of more than half of the Lower House votes required to become prime minister, capping days of drama and a scramble for power during which he outmanoeuvred the most successful political party in Thailand’s history.

He won with 311 votes, while Mr Chaikasem received 152 votes. Two lawmakers did not vote and 27 abstained.

“The only common enemy among different political parties is whoever is an enemy of the country,” Mr Anutin had told reporters ahead of the vote. “We need to stand united.”

The vote, however, was overshadowed by

the dramatic departure

of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s most powerful politician.

Thaksin, the central figure in a tumultuous two-decade battle for power in Thailand, left on his private jet for Dubai late on Sept 4, with Pheu Thai in disarray.

In an overnight post on X, Thaksin said he arrived for a medical check-up in Dubai, where he spent most 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.

He said he would return by Sept 8.

He flew out of Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport at 7.17pm (8.17pm Singapore time), after the authorities confirmed there was no court order prohibiting him from leaving the country, the police said in a statement.

The departure of Thaksin, the driving force behind Pheu Thai, came six days after a court

sacked his daughter

, Ms Paetongtarn Shinawatra, as prime minister for an ethics violation, triggering a scramble for power and a bold offensive by a renegade party to form its own government.

Pheu Thai, the populist political juggernaut that won five of the past six elections, has fought desperately to thwart the challenge of former alliance partner Bhumjaithai, which has won the backing of the biggest force in Parliament – the People’s Party – with a pledge to call a new election within four months.

New man in charge

The turmoil opened the way for Mr Anutin to take power.

He previously served as deputy prime minister, interior minister and health minister, but is perhaps most famous for delivering on a promise in 2022 to legalise cannabis.

Charged with the tourism-dependent kingdom’s Covid-19 response, he accused Westerners of spreading the virus and was forced to apologise after a backlash.

He has served in Cabinets spanning Thailand’s political divide, including those of populist Thaksin, coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha, and most recently Ms Paetongtarn.

For nearly a decade, Mr Anutin played the role of coalition kingmaker, leveraging provincial networks and business ties. A 2009 US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks also described him as close to the then Crown Prince.  

Mr Anutin will head a fragile coalition that includes royalist parties which previously blocked the predecessor of the People’s Party – Move Forward – from taking power after the 2023 election.

Under a deal with the People’s Party, he must dissolve Parliament within four months of being sworn in and delivering his policy statement.

New elections would give the People’s Party the chance to pick up more seats. It leads rivals by a wide margin in opinion polls, and its leader, Mr Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, is ranked as the politician most preferred to be prime minister.

But it does not have a prime minister nominee left after Move Forward was dissolved and its sole candidate, Mr Pita Limjaroenrat,

banned from politics for 10 years

.

Thailand has a long history of political upheaval, with royalist judges and generals repeatedly toppling elected leaders.

Ms Paetongtarn became the fifth Shinawatra-linked premier dismissed by the Constitutional Court.

The political morass is likely to add a further drag on Thailand’s economy, which is struggling to gain traction and lagging its neighbours, particularly in the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The government has already forecast growth to average 2 per cent in 2025, less than half the pace of expansion of regional peers such as Indonesia and the Philippines. AFP, REUTERS, BLOOMBERG