Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has survived a vote of no-confidence in the country’s parliament, seeking her removal from office on the grounds that she has failed to fulfill the duties of her office and acted as a proxy for her father, Thaksin Shinawatra.
In a session today, 387 members of the House of Representatives voted against the motion of no-confidence, compared with 162 in favor and seven abstentions.
In a post on her social media accounts shortly after the vote, the Thai leader said that the vote went “smoothly” and that “every vote for or against me is motivation for us to keep working for the people,” according to the translation posted by Channel News Asia correspondent Saksith Saiyasombut.
The motion of no-confidence was filed by the opposition People’s Party in late February. The party initially intended also to censure 10 other ministers, but decided to focus its efforts on the prime minister. It accused Paetongtarn of an inability to carry out her duties, and asserted that she was governing under the undue influence of her father, a former prime minister who has been banned from holding office due to a past conviction for abuse of power.
Under Thailand’s Constitution, a bloc of at least one-fifth of the members of the House of Representatives can bring a vote of no-confidence against any individual minister, or the cabinet as a whole. This is then followed by a general debate and a vote in which the motion requires a majority vote to pass.
While Paetongtarn survived the vote, she was forced to absorb heavy rhetorical fire from People’s Party lawmakers during the 30 hours of debate this week. As Ken Mathis Lohatepanont noted in his detailed recap of the debates, the People’s Party took particular aim at the “grand compromise” that helped secure Thaksin’s dramatic return to Thailand in 2023, after 15 years of self-imposed exile.
The former PM’s return was negotiated as part of the post-election pact that saw the Pheu Thai Party form a government with conservative and military-backed parties that were formerly its bitter foes. The purpose of the pact was to prevent the progressive Move Forward Party, the People’s Party’s banned predecessor, from forming government after the party unexpectedly won a plurality of the vote at the May 2023 general election.
In a 100-minute speech yesterday, prominent People’s Party lawmaker Rangsiman Rome alleged that Paetongtarn and other senior government officials conspired to ensure that Thaksin avoided serving any time in prison, despite facing an eight-year sentence dating from his time in power. (The sentence was reduced by a royal pardon, and then expunged entirely in February of last year.)
“Thaksin has not spent a single night in jail due to the prime minister and her allies cutting a deal that exchanged national interests for personal gain, thereby undermining the rule of law and the judicial process,” he said, according to The Nation.
Addressing parliament on Monday, People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut claimed that Paetongtarn’s government exists only to secure the return of Thaksin, who has since assumed a position of de facto leadership within the government.
“We have a leader outside of the system… directing government policies without any accountability,” Natthaphong told parliament, as per Reuters. “Thailand is at a double loss: one person works without accountability, another who holds state power lacks qualifications.”
Other People’s Party leaders also assailed Paetongtarn for alleged tax evasion, and for lying about the recent deportation of Uyghur asylum seekers to China. Prawit Wongsuwon, the head of the military-backed Palang Pracharath Party, which was part of the Pheu Thai coalition before being kicked out last year, also delivered a 10-minute speech that attacked Paetongtarn’s performance as PM.
Questions about Thaksin’s influence over the Pheu Thai Party, and hence the government, have swirled since his return to Thailand, but have become more insistent since Paetongtarn took office last August, after her predecessor Srettha Thavisin was forced to step down. At just 38 years of age, Paetongtarn is Thailand’s youngest ever prime minister and had no experience in government prior to her selection as leader. While Paetongtarn enjoyed a honeymoon period, in large part due to the government’s “digital wallet” stimulus handouts, a public opinion survey published in December showed that she had slipped behind Natthaphong of the People’s Party as the preferred prime minister.
As with the four failed no-confidence motions that were attempted against Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who led the military coup of 2014 and served as prime minister until 2023, the no-confidence motion against Paetongtarn was not expected to pass. While the People’s Party is the largest single party in the House, holding 143 of the 500 seats, the ruling Pheu Thai-led coalition boasts a healthy 321-seat majority.
However, by compelling the prime minister to submit himself or herself to questioning by lawmakers, the motion gave the People’s Party a means of raising issues of national concern and subjecting the government to a thorough public grilling.
As Lohatepanont noted in his recap of the week’s events, “Bringing the murky circumstances behind Thaksin’s return back into the picture was probably a smart political play for the opposition, as the grand compromise between Thaksin and the conservatives pleased neither the Pheu Thai nor the conservative base.”
