Explainer | Srettha’s exit: are Thailand’s conservatives on the rise, democracy in retreat?
- Despite challenges from other parties, Pheu Thai ‘will almost certainly remain in government’, an analyst says
Shinawatras still strong?
Pheu Thai, the largest party in that coalition, now has a choice between 75-year-old former justice minister Chaikasem Nitisiri and the untested Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 37, the daughter of party patriarch Thaksin Shinawatra.
Chaikasem appears to be the front-runner for a vote due on Friday in parliament for a new prime minister.
Rumours on Thursday afternoon mounted that party leader Paetongtarn may instead be forwarded for the vote, raising the potential of a third Shinawatra direct family member to hold the post.
If Chaikasem succeeds, he will become Thailand’s oldest ever prime minister. Despite a recent history of ill health, he is seen as a safe steward of Thaksin’s interests.
Thaksin, the divisive billionaire and influential two-time ex-prime minister, is hogging the headlines once again. He returned to Thailand almost a year ago after a jail sentence for corruption which prodded him into 15 years in self-exile and was pardoned by Thailand’s powerful king. That signalled an apparent deal with the conservatives who once saw his electoral magnetism as the gravest threat to their ascendancy.