BANGKOK (AP) — Veteran Thai politician Anutin Charnvirakul won a vote in Parliament on Friday to become the country’s next prime minister, according to an unofficial running tally broadcast live on television.
Anutin, leader of the Bhumjaithai party, won a total of 311 votes, far exceeding the 247 required majority from the House of Representative’s 492 active members. He and his government are expected to take office in a few days after obtaining a formal appointment from King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Anutin succeeds Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was dismissed by court order as prime minister last week after being found guilty of ethics violations over a politically compromising phone call with neighboring Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen.
The dispute erupted into a deadly five-day armed conflict in July.
Anutin, who's an elected member of the House, got up from his seat and walked around the chamber to take pictures with other lawmakers when he was a few votes short from the winning total. He and wellwishers exchanged the traditional Thai greeting of wai, with both hands clasped together.
After the House Speaker announced the total tally, a round of applause erupted as he thanked lawmakers around him.
Anutin had served in Paetongtarn’s Cabinet, but he resigned his position and withdrew his party from her coalition government after news of the leaked phone call caused a public uproar.
Pheu Thai, currently leading a caretaker government, attempted to dissolve Parliament on Tuesday, but the acting prime minister said their request was rejected by the king’s Privy Council. The party also nominated its candidate Chaikasem Nitisiri. He received 152 votes.
The 58-year-old Anutin had served in the Pheu Thai-led coalition government that took power in 2023 and before that in the military-backed but elected government under former Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.
Anutin is best known for successfully lobbying for the decriminalization of cannabis, a policy that is now being more strictly regulated for medical purposes. He also played a high-profile role as health minister during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was accused of tardiness in obtaining adequate vaccine supplies to fight the virus.
His party has promised to dissolve Parliament within four months in exchange for support from the People’s Party. That party’s leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, said it would remain in the opposition, leaving the new government potentially a minority one.
The People’s Party also said that an Anutin-led government would have to commit to organizing a referendum on the drafting of a new constitution by an elected constituent assembly. The party has long sought changes to the constitution — which was imposed during a military government — to make it more democratic.
The People’s Party, then named the Move Forward Party, won the most seats in the 2023 election but was kept from power when a joint vote of the House and the Senate failed to approve its candidate for prime minister.
Senators, who were appointed by a military government and were strong supporters of Thailand’s royalist conservative establishment, voted against the progressive party because they opposed its policy of seeking reforms to the monarchy.
The Senate no longer holds the right to take part in the vote for prime minister.
After Move Forward was blocked from taking power, Pheu Thai had one of its candidates, real estate executive Srettha Thavisin, approved as prime minister to lead a coalition government. But he served just a year before the Constitutional Court dismissed him from office for ethical violations.
Srettha’s replacement Paetongtarn, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s daughter, also lasted just a year in office. But even before she was forced out, her government was greatly weakened when Anutin’s Bhumjaithai Party abandoned her coalition right after her controversial call in June with Cambodia’s Hun Sen.
Its withdrawal left Pheu Thai’s coalition with just a tiny and unstable majority in Parliament.
A day ahead of the vote, Thaksin made a surprise departure from Thailand to Dubai, where he lived during his self-imposed exile starting in 2008. His travel took place days before a court ruling over a handling of his return in 2023 that could open him up to a new prison sentence.
The move prompted speculation that he was fleeing again, although Thaksin said he was travelling for a medical checkup and would return to Thailand in a few days.
Jintamas Saksornchai, The Associated Press
