Thai PM candidate Paetongtarn Shinawatra resumes campaign 2 days after giving birth: ‘children are my secret power’

Paetongtarn Shinawatra said her new baby boy wouldn’t affect her ability to rally support for her Pheu Thai Party with just under two weeks to go before the polls

Shinawatra and the Pheu Thai Party have consistently topped opinion polls as Thailand’s favoured prime minister candidate and next government

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Thailand’s ‘Ung-Ing’ Shinawatra resumes PM campaign 2 days after giving birth. Photo: AP

Published: 8:20pm, 3 May 2023Updated: 3:48pm, 4 May 2023

The front-running candidate for prime minister of Thailand says she is eager to get back on the campaign trail, just two days after giving birth.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday at the hospital in Bangkok where she gave birth, Paetongtarn Shinawatra – better known by her nickname ‘Ung Ing’ – said her new baby boy wouldn’t affect her ability to rally support for her Pheu Thai Party with just under two weeks to go before the polls.

“I believe good things come along with children,” she said, sitting beside her husband, Pidok Sooksawas. “I believe that children are my secret power to work, and to lead everyday life.”

Pheu Thai Party candidate Paetongtarn Shinawatra, youngest daughter of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, presents her newborn son Thasin in an incubator while addressing media. Photo: AFP

The newborn, Prutthasin Sooksawas, was brought into the room in a rolling incubator and displayed briefly to the media before being moved out again.

Paetongtarn is the youngest daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the popular but divisive former prime minister who was ousted by a military coup in 2006.

She is also the niece of Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government met a similar fate eight years later.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra and her husband Pidok Sooksawas front a news conference at the Praram 9 Hospital in Bangkok after the birth of her child. Photo: Bloomberg

Thaksin, who has been in self-exile since the 2006 coup, tweeted on Monday after the birth that he would like permission to come home to see his grandchildren, ending the tweet with “See you soon.”