Thai billionaire and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s party will meet on Thursday to choose a candidate for prime minister, a day after the kingdom’s Supreme Court dismissed incumbent Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin over an ethics violation.
The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that Srettha, 62, had violated rules by appointing a cabinet minister with a criminal record, deepening political uncertainty in Thailand a week after the main opposition party dissolved.
Parliament is scheduled to meet at 10:00 a.m. (03:00 GMT) on Friday to vote on a new prime minister.
Srettha’s Pheu Thai party – the electoral vehicle of former Manchester City owner Thaksin – is the largest member of an 11-party ruling coalition that includes royalist and pro-military groups that were once their bitter rivals.
On Thursday, the party will choose one of its two candidates – former justice minister Chaikasem Nitisiri or Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra – to replace Srettha.
Pheu Thai Secretary-General Sorawong Thienthong told reporters they would discuss their choice with coalition partners.
Srettha is the party’s third prime minister to be removed from office by the Constitutional Court, leaving office after less than a year.
Thai politics has endured two decades of chronic instability marked by coups, street protests and court rulings – fuelled in large part by the ongoing struggle of the military and royalist establishment against progressive parties associated with their enemy, Thaksin.
The tycoon and former prime minister returned to Thailand from self-imposed exile last August after 15 years. That same day, Srettha seized power in an alliance with pro-military parties that had previously been staunch opponents of Thaksin and his supporters.
The timing seemed to indicate a truce in the long-running feud as both sides sought to ward off the threat posed by the newer Move Forward Party (MFP), which won a majority of votes in last year’s elections but was then blocked from forming a government.
The case against Srettha was brought by 40 former senators appointed by the military junta that overthrew the elected Pheu Thai government in a coup in 2014.
The Senate also played a key role in blocking the MFP after last year’s elections.
Senators alarmed by the MFP’s promises to reform lese majeste laws and break up powerful corporate monopolies refused to support then-leader Pita Limjaroenrat as prime minister. The party was forced to go into opposition.
The Supreme Court dissolved the MFP last week and barred Pita and its key officials from politics for ten years.
Srettha, meanwhile, was dismissed following the appointment of Pichit Chuenban, a former Thaksin-affiliated lawyer.
Pichit, who was sentenced to six months in prison in 2008 for a corruption offence, left the cabinet after the case was filed to save Srettha, but the court did not let up.
tp-rma/smw
