Heiress to Thailand’s most powerful political dynasty, Paetongtarn Shinawatra became prime minister on Friday at just 37 years old.
“I decided it was time to do something for the country and the party,” she said after the vote.
The daughter of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, Paetongtarn was the sole candidate in the majority coalition led by her Pheu Thai party when lawmakers voted to choose the head of government.
She is the third Thai leader to bear the name Shinawatra, after her father Thaksin (2001–2006) and her aunt Yingluck (2011–2014), both of whom were overthrown in a coup.
His surname is inseparable from the tensions that have divided the kingdom for more than two decades, between conservative elites and voters eager for change.
Thaksin, ultra-popular in the 2000s, was long the bête noire of the monarchy and the army, who rejected his policies as populist and profiteering.
But for the past year, the family party, Pheu Thai, has governed within a coalition including pro-army parties, to block the reformist party Move Forward, surprise winner of the legislative elections and since dissolved.
Revealed to the general public on this occasion, she needed all the votes in the coalition to become prime minister.
In a rare move, during the campaign for the May 2023 elections, she gave birth to her second child, a boy whom she presented as her “secret power” ahead of her first election.
In charge of “soft power”
Although she was Pheu Thai’s leading figure during the campaign, her party nominated Srettha Thavisin, a property developer with a consensus profile, for the post of prime minister at the time.
During Srettha’s term, dismissed by the courts on Wednesday, Paetongtarn promoted Thai “soft power” within a government committee, far from sensitive issues, while occupying the leadership of the party.
Paetongtarn is the third child of Thaksin, a former police officer who made his fortune in telecommunications and was twice elected prime minister, in 2001 and 2005, before being overthrown in a coup in 2006.
Popular among rural people who have benefited from his social policies, he returned to Thailand last year after 15 years in self-imposed exile to escape corruption convictions he said were politically motivated.
Her daughter grew up in Bangkok and studied hospitality in the UK.
In 2019, she married an airline pilot in two lavish receptions in the Thai capital and Hong Kong.
Very active on social networks, she is followed by more than 600,000 people on Instagram, where she shares photos of her family life and her social activities.
Often dressed in designer clothes, or in red, the party colour, she wants to appeal to the new generation, while maintaining the link with older voters, loyal to her father.
Her charisma and astute remarks during the campaign had also surprised some who saw her as nothing more than a puppet of Thaksin.