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Jakarta: The leader of the progressive party that topped the popular vote in Thailand’s elections has had his bid to become prime minister thwarted by the country’s military-appointed Senate.
The move has plunged the south-east Asian nation into further political uncertainty.
Pita Limjaroenrat’s orange-coloured Move Forward Party stunned the powerful military and royalist establishment in Thailand when it claimed the most seats in the May 14 elections, having run on a reformist platform that included amending the country’s controversial lese-majeste law.
It won 151 of 500 lower-house seats and formed an eight-party, pro-democracy coalition of 312 MPs, among them members of Pheu Thai, the party associated with self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra that placed second with 141 seats.
The election result heralded a seismic shift in Thai politics, nine years after the armed forces reclaimed power in the latest of a series of military takeovers in Bangkok.
But while the Move Forward-Pheu Thai coalition claimed a clear majority in Thailand’s House of Representatives, trouncing the country’s military-linked conservative parties, Limjaroenrat’s attempt to become the country’s 30th prime minister has been blocked in a bicameral sitting of parliament.
Under a new constitution forced in the wake of the 2014 coup, 250 senators appointed by the government of coup leader Prayut Chan-o-ch also had a say in Thursday’s parliamentary prime ministerial poll, meaning the 42-year-old Harvard graduate needed at least 375 of 699 total votes in the National Assembly after one senator resigned.
That left him requiring the endorsement of 63 members of the junta-installed Senate but despite being the only nominee for prime minister, he could not secure the numbers. Amid dozens of abstentions and absences, Limjaroenrat wound up with short with 324 votes, unable to overcome fierce resistance to his reform agenda, which includes separating the military from politics.
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