Thaksin’s Daughter Paetongtarn Among Three Nominees Of Pheu Thai Party

(Bloomberg) -- Thai opposition party leading in opinion surveys officially nominated Paetongtarn Shinawatra, a scion of the Shinawatra family, as one of its three prime minister candidates as widely expected, pitting her against ex-generals seeking to extend a near decade of military-backed rule.

Paetongtarn, the youngest daughter of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra and popularly known as Ung Ing, was confirmed along with property tycoon Srettha Thavisin and twice-nominated former justice minister Chaikasem Nitisiri as Pheu Thai's premier candidates at an event in Bangkok on Wednesday. 

The 36-year-old politician is seen as a front-runner for the top job as she commands a wide lead over other aspirants including incumbent Prayuth Chan-Ocha, a former army chief who seized power from a Pheu Thai government in 2014, and Move Forward Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat. 

“We will bring back democracy and the nation's prosperity that has been lost for nearly a decade,” Paetongtarn told thousands of cheering supporters. “We believe the post-coup experiences have been a nightmare to the people. You have been through a lot of pain. We don't want that again. We don't want another coup.” 

The Thai general election on May 14 is shaping up to be a battle between a Pheu Thai-led pro-democracy camp and conservative parties led by the ruling generals and their allies. Major parties are promising a similar package of cash handouts, higher minimum wages and a suspension of debt repayments to woo more than 52 million voters who will elect 500 members to the lower house in a two-ballot system. One hundred seats will allocated based on the proportion of votes that each party receives. 

Pheu Thai is forecast to win almost 50% votes, according to recent opinion surveys. It's banking on an array of populist policies, ranging from a 70% hike in daily minimum wage to digital cash handouts of 10,000 baht per person, to win over support from rural to middle-class voters squeezed by an uneven post-pandemic economic recovery. 

But it's unclear if Pheu Thai will be able to take power even if it wins the most seats. The party won 136 seats in 2019, more than any other single group but not enough to prevent Prayuth from returning to power with support from a military-backed coalition.

A constitution drafted after the last coup also allows the 250-member Senate, a body stacked with allies from the military establishment, to vote for prime minister alongside the lower house until 2024. 

At the Bangkok rally, Paetongtarn asked supporters to help deliver the party a landslide win to counter any potential move by the Senate to deny its candidates. Previous Thaksin-linked parties have won the most seats in every election since 2001, only to be unseated from government by the army or the courts. 

While Paetongtarn's aunt Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted in the coup led by Prayuth, her father Thaksin's government was toppled in a coup in 2006. He has lived in self-exile overseas for nearly 15 years. 

Pheu Thai has pledged to rewrite the nation's military-drafted constitution if it wins the election as part of the party's six-point road map to restore democracy. It has also promised to propose an anti-coup bill and abolish mandatory military conscription as a first step to keeping the army out of politics and ending the cycle of coups.

(Updates with comments from Paetongtarn in fourth paragraph.)

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