Thailand’s parliament elected Anutin Charnvirakul as new prime minister on Friday (Sep 5).
He secured the majority of votes, beating Pheu Thai party’s Chaikasem Nitisiri in the first prime minister face-off in parliament since 2019, with voting still underway.
The tycoon was already in pole position ahead of Friday’s vote, declaring that he had secured 146 votes from his own Bhumjaithai party and its allies, while the People’s Party said its 143 lawmakers would also support him.
Heir to a construction engineering fortune, the 58-year-old has 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. That policy is now in the process of being more strictly regulated for medical purposes.
Charged with the tourist-dependent kingdom’s COVID-19 response, he accused Westerners of spreading the virus and was forced to apologise after a backlash.
Anutin once backed fromer prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s coalition, but abandoned her this summer in apparent outrage over her conduct during a border row with neighbouring Cambodia.
Thailand’s Constitutional Court found on Aug 29 that her conduct breached ministerial ethics and fired her after only a year in power.
The lead-up to the vote on Friday was earlier overshadowed by a sudden trip to Dubai by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Polarising billionaire Thaksin, the central figure in a tumultuous two-decade battle for power in Thailand, left on his private jet late on Thursday, with his family’s ruling party Pheu Thai in disarray.
In an early-morning post on social media site X, Thaksin said he left Thailand for a medical check-up in Singapore, but diverted to Dubai because of an airport closure and will “visit friends” there as well as meet respiratory and orthopaedic doctors.
Additional reporting by Saksith Saiyasombut.
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