BANGKOK (AFP) – Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra survived a no-confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday, defeating a challenge from opposition parties who accused her of being a puppet of her father, billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
After a two-day censure debate in which the opposition attacked 38-year-old Paetongtarn’s management of the country and her inexperience, MPs voted down the no-confidence motion by 319 votes to 162, with seven abstentions.
Paetongtarn thanked her supporters after winning the vote.
“All votes, both for and against, will be a force driving me and the cabinet to carry on working hard for the people,” she wrote on Facebook.
Thaksin, the most influential but controversial politician of modern Thai history, returned to the kingdom in 2023 after 15 years of self-exile.
He served a few months of an eight-year jail sentence for historic graft and abuse of power charges in a police hospital before being pardoned by the king, fuelling rumours of a backroom deal to treat him leniently.
The 75-year-old remains popular among millions of poorer Thais who prospered under his 2001-2006 rule, but he is despised by the kingdom’s conservative elite who regard him as corrupt and manipulative.
Paetongtarn became prime minister last year at the head of a coalition government led by the Pheu Thai party — the latest incarnation of the political movement founded by Thaksin — after the incumbent Srettha Thavisin was thrown out by a court order.
During the censure debate Rangsiman Rome, an outspoken lawmaker with the main opposition People’s Party, accused Paetongtarn of engineering preferential treatment for her father.
“You made a deal, a demon deal, to get your father better conditions than other prisoners,” he said in parliament.
“The condition was your father will not be in jail for a single day.”
Paetongtarn denied the allegation, pointing out that she only became prime minister several months after her father’s royal pardon.
Opposition MPs also accused Paetongtarn of avoiding tax and of mishandling the case of 40 Uyghurs sent back to China late last month.
The repatriation of the Uyghurs sparked international condemnation and led to Washington imposing visa bans on some Thai officials.
