Thai lawmakers will vote on Friday on whether to appoint the 37-year-old daughter of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister, promoting a third member of the family to the country’s top job even though they have never held the post.
Patongtarn Shinawatra, whose father and aunt have served as prime minister, would become the youngest leader in the history of Thailand’s constitutional monarchy if elected.
She will also become the second woman Prime Minister of the state after her aunt.
The vote, which began at 10 a.m. local time, came after the kingdom’s top court sacked Prime Minister Shrestha Thawisin for appointing a Cabinet minister with criminal convictions.
Shrestha’s ouster on Wednesday was the latest round in a long-running battle between the military, the pro-monarchy establishment and populist parties linked to Patongtarn’s father, a telecoms tycoon and one-time owner of Manchester City.
The Pheu Thai Party on Thursday chose Patongtarn as its replacement candidate. None of the 10 other parties in the coalition offered an alternative.
Bhumjaithai, the third-largest party in parliament, said it had “agreed to support Pheu Thai’s candidate” in Friday’s vote.
Patongtarn now needs to secure 247 votes out of the body’s 493 current members.
“We are confident that the party and the coalition parties will lead our country,” he said after the party announced his candidacy.
However, in Thailand’s tumultuous politics, victory in parliament is not assured.
Patongtarn, who has never held elected office, helped run the hotel arm of the family’s business empire before entering politics three years ago and was a near-constant presence on the campaign trail in 2023.
In that year’s national election, the nascent Move Forward Party won the most votes after pledging to reform the country’s strict kleptocracy laws and break up powerful business monopolies.
But concerned senators blocked the MFP’s attempt to form a government.
Pheu Thai then formed an alliance with pro-military parties that had once been staunch opponents of Thaksin and his followers, resulting in the rise of Shrestha.
Less than a year later, he became the third Pheu Thai prime minister to be removed from office by the Constitutional Court.
Shrestha was removed from the post over the appointment of Pichit Chuenban, a former lawyer with ties to Thaksin’s family who was facing criminal charges.
Last week, the court also voted to dissolve the MFP and ban members of its executive board from politics for 10 years.
Long Shadows
Thaksin Shinawatra has exercised significant influence over state politics for two decades.
He transformed Thai politics in the early 2000s through populist policies that won him and his party enduring support from rural residents — and two elections.
But this success came at a price: he was despised by Thailand’s powerful elite and conservative establishment, who viewed his rule as corrupt, authoritarian and socially destabilizing.
After being ousted as prime minister by the military in 2006, Thaksin went into self-exile two years later, but according to his critics, he never stopped commenting on or intervening in national affairs.
Thaksin returned to the country last year.
Patongtarn, known in Thailand by his nickname Uang Eng, is Thaksin’s youngest child.
She grew up in Bangkok and studied hotel management in Britain, then married a commercial pilot. The couple now has two children.
Patongtarn shares her luxurious lifestyle with her nearly one million followers on Instagram.