Paetongtarn Shinawatra has become Thailand’s youngest-ever prime minister after parliament confirmed her nomination by the ruling coalition of her Pheu Thai party.
Paetongtarn succeeds Srettha Thavisin who was removed from his post by a constitutional court ruling on Wednesday.
The 37-year-old, known by her nickname Ung Ing, is the youngest child of billionaire tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra and is the third member of the family after her father and aunt to hold the nation’s top job.
Srettha’s removal was the latest chapter in a long-running battle between the military, pro-royalist establishment and populist parties linked to Thaksin, who shook up the country’s staid politics when he was first elected prime minister in 2001.
He spent years in exile after being removed in a military coup in 2006 and returned to Thailand only last year, on the day Pheu Thai formed the government.
The ruling coalition chose Paetongtarn as its replacement at a meeting on Thursday night after none of the 10 other parties in the coalition put forward an alternative.
Pheu Thai and its partners hold 314 seats in parliament, and Paetongtarn needed the approval of more than half of the current 493 lawmakers to become prime minister.
Paetongtarn helped run the hotel arm of the family’s business empire before entering politics three years ago and has never held elected office. She was a near-constant presence on the campaign trail in the 2023 elections when she was one of Pheu Thai’s prime minister candidates, giving birth just two weeks before polling day.
The reformist Move Forward Party (MFP) won the most seats in parliament but was blocked from forming a government by the Senate, which at the time was appointed by the military and had a veto of prime ministerial appointments.
Last week, the constitutional court also voted to dissolve MFP and ban its executive board members from politics for 10 years over its promise to amend strict royal defamation laws.
The party has since regrouped as the People’s Party.
