Thai PM Prayut touts experience ahead of tough election

BANGKOK - Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, facing a tough battle to win a new term, said on Monday that the kingdom needs an experienced leader, as candidates began registering for May’s general election.

The former army chief, who came to power in a coup in 2014, faces a difficult challenge from a

resurgent opposition fronted by Ms Paetongtarn Shinawatra,

daughter of billionaire and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mr Prayut, 69, arrived in an open-top truck with prospective MPs and supporters from his United Thai Nation Party in lively scenes at a Bangkok sports hall.

Thailand “needs people who know how to do the job. If they have never done it, they can’t do it”, he told Thairath TV.

Thais go to the polls on May 14

for the first election since the kingdom was rocked by major youth-led pro-democracy protests in 2020.

Mr Prayut and his party are lagging in the polls behind Ms Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai and the

pro-reform Move Forward Party

led by Mr Pita Limjaroenrat.

Under Mr Prayut, the kingdom has struggled to bounce back from the economic impact of Covid-19.

Thailand is the only country in South-east Asia – apart from coup-hit Myanmar – where gross domestic product has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels, according to the World Bank.

While opposition parties are riding high in the polls, Thailand’s junta-scripted 2017 Constitution gives army-favoured parties a big advantage when it comes to forming a government.

To become prime minister, a candidate must win a majority of the 500 elected Lower House MPs as well as 250 military-appointed senators.

Pheu Thai has said it is targeting a landslide victory in the election to prevent the military establishment from blocking its route to power, as was the case in 2019 when it won most seats but was shut out of government.

Ms Paetongtarn – who is eight months pregnant – came to support Pheu Thai candidates as they registered, though neither she nor Mr Prayut is running as an MP.

The 2017 Constitution does not require the prime minister to be an elected lawmaker.

If successful, Ms Paetongtarn, 36, would be following both her father and her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra – whom Mr Prayut ousted in his 2014 coup – in becoming premier. AFP