Now Thaksin's daughter leads the family fight against Thailand military in May election

Thirty-six-year old Paetongtarn Shinawatra, whose father and aunt were ousted from power, is preparing to renew the family fight against Thailand military forces.

Paetongtarn has been nominated by the current opposition party in Parliament Pheu Thai to contest for the upcoming Thailand elections slated for 14 May.

She appears determined to win the upcoming election by a landslide victory, hoping to recreate the history set by her father.

Paetongtarn, if elected, would become the fourth prime minister in the Shinawatra dynasty. 

Despite overseeing economic growth, her father Thaksin Shinawatra and aunt Yingluck Shinawatra were ousted by the army in 2006 and 2014, respectively.

Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in-law, served as prime minister for a brief while in 2008, and Yingluck Shinawatra, his sister, was in that position from 2011 to 2014. Court decisions made both resign from their positions, reports The Guardian.

Thaksin's reign was rife with allegations of corruption. His wealth also aided him in purchasing the Manchester City Football Club for £81.6 million in 2007, when he was out of office. He later sold it for £200 million.

Corruption allegations would go on to plague the Shinawatra dynasty. 

Thailand's general election on 14 May will bring in new faces, but it will be overshadowed by old animosities between the military-royalist establishment and popular opposition parties challenging the status quo, reports Reuters.

The conflict in the kingdom has formed a turbulent two decades of street protests, judicial intervention, and coups, which have been quelled in recent years, partly by Covid-19 limitations, but could reoccur.

The major election contention will be between Thaksin Shinawatra's rural-based political juggernaut and the conservative, Bangkok-based political elite, which is dominated by pro-military forces and has ruled since the previous coup in 2014.

Who is Paetongtarn Shinawatra?

Paetongtarn, the youngest child of former but still popular premier Thaksin Shinawatra, has repeatedly topped polls, with a March poll showing her support at 32.1%.

She has been campaigning in the main opposition Pheu Thai party's rural heartland, vowing to reinstate populist programmes such as nearly raising the daily minimum wage to 600 baht ($17.61).

Paetongtarn, also known as "Ung Ing," is a real estate executive and the largest stakeholder in another developer, SC Asset. She is currently pregnant and will give birth a few weeks before the election.

"We will help to bring back democracy, give a better life [to the people], and bring back the wealth to the country that has disappeared for almost a decade," she told crowds gathered at a stadium in Nonthaburi of Thailand.

Her party has promised to revitalise and modernise Thailand's economy, which it claims has stagnated under Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army general who came to office through a coup.

It has also promised cash handouts and an increase in the minimum wage from 328 to 354 baht ($9.64 - $10.41) per day to 600 baht ($17.65).

Paetongtarn, who warns voters about the perils of coups sending the country "backwards," has stated that a landslide victory is critical in forcing the Senate to acknowledge the vote.

She hasn't indicated what she would do if her party won the most seats but lost the election.

Thaksin Shinawatra

Thaksin Shinawatra is a Thai politician and businessman who served as the country's prime minister from 2001 to 2006.

A descendant of Chinese merchants who settled in the area before World War I, Thaksin originally planned for a career in the police force, although his father was a politician.

Thaksin, a telecoms millionaire, has become enormously popular with the rural poor due to his offers of affordable medical care, debt relief, and anti-establishment stance. Following his landslide election victory in 2001, companies warmed to him as well, owing primarily to his trademark "Thaksinomics," which ushered in an age of economic success.

The programmes, which included farmer loans and debt moratoriums as well as subsidised fuel prices, were geared at rural Thais, who make up the majority of the country's population, but they were opposed by the country's wealthy elites. Thaksin was overthrown in a military coup in 2006, accused of corruption, and went into self-imposed exile (though he temporarily returned to Thailand in 2008, leaving again just before the court convicted him).

The former premier has been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai for more than a decade.

Among other things, he owns a majority position in the property firm SC Asset.

Thaksin has invested in two health-tech businesses based in the United Kingdom – DNANudge and Owlstone Medical.

Yingluck Shinawatra

Yingluck Shinawatra. Photo: Collected

Thaksin's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is the first female prime minister of the Kingdom of Thailand.

Yingluck became prime minister in 2011 after another Shinawatra landslide victory, although she was tormented by sexist and misogynistic insults and was regularly accused of being controlled by her brother by critics, reports CNN.

She was removed from office in 2014 when the Constitutional Court found that she abused her position by removing a military officer from a civil service position.

After Prayuth's coup, Yingluck followed Thaksin into self-imposed exile.

She fled the nation in 2017 to avoid arrest in connection with a rice subsidy scheme.

Populist vs Pro-military regimes

Thaksin and Yingluck were toppled by the army in 2006 and 2014 through two coups d'état, respectively.

The 13th and most recent coup d'état in Thailand, which was carried out in 2014 against the elected government of Paetongtarn's aunt Yingluck Shinawatra, was masterminded by the former army head Prayuth Chan-o-cha.

While the Shinawatras are popular in the countryside and among working-class voters, many middle- and upper-class Thais accuse them of cronyism in order to enrich business acquaintances and of buying off the people with costly populist measures that unfairly burden urban tax-payers.

The Shinawatras, however, deny the accusations, Reuters has reported.

Now they both live in self-imposed exile to avoid graft convictions their allies say were aimed at preventing political comebacks.

Over the last two decades, supporters of the Shinawatras and their pro-military opponents have marched to the streets, causing horrific havoc when the army cracks down.

Authorities will also be careful to avoid the resumption of youth-led protests that began in 2020 with opposition to Prayuth's government but escalated into previously inconceivable requests for the monarchy to be reformated – historically regarded as the indisputable cornerstone of Thai culture and authority.

The pro-military and royalist parties are emphasising the country's repositioning as a manufacturing hub for green industries like electric vehicles, smart electronics, and chips, which has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and the relative stability it has experienced since the coup in 2014, reports Bloomberg.

Additionally, it has committed enormous sums of money to the construction of high-speed rail links, one of which connects to China via Laos.

The opposition has charged that Prayuth's regime mismanaged the economy during the epidemic and failed to stop corruption. It also notes the suppression of youth-led public rallies before and during the epidemic and claims that democratic ideals and freedom of expression have suffered since the coup.