Pita Limjaroenrat is not your typical Thai politician.
In a country where the average age of cabinet ministers is 65, where unabashed respect for elders is still a cherished tradition, his youth – he looks much younger than his 42 years – and unabashed confidence stand out. .
That he, after a shock election result that put his reformist Move Forward party ahead of the rest, is poised to become the youngest prime minister in 78 years, has angered the conservative political establishment. has dominated Thailand for most of the modern era.
Difficult negotiations are now underway to form a coalition government with Pheu Thai, the second-largest party, which has won every election in Thailand since 2001, and won the most recent election on May 14. It was expected.
Both Pheu Thai and Move Forward consider themselves progressives, opposed to military intervention in politics like the 2014 coup that ousted the Pheu Thai administration.
But Move Forward’s young activists outflanked the older party, defeating many of its candidates, with an imaginative, social-media-driven campaign that offered voters a break from the past, and a different kind of political leadership. Offered.
“I’m different,” Peeta tells me. “We are not joining the alliance for a quick fix or to get me the prime ministership. I am in government for the people, the world has changed.
“You don’t have to be a strong man with toxic masculinity, to make sure that ‘people have to listen to me, and I have to be in the spotlight all the time’.
“I don’t need to be perfect all the time. I can be like a normal person here in Thailand, ride a bike, eat on the street like other people.”
Pita Limjaroenrat was born into a wealthy Thai family.
He cites being sent to school as a teenager in New Zealand, while he was pursuing postgraduate studies in the United States, and his experience working in the family rice bran business, and then ride-hailing company Grab. As an executive with, as formative effects.
He admires grassroots leaders like New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Uruguay’s Jose “Pepe” Mojica.
Move Forward is the most ambitious reform agenda of any party in Thailand’s electoral history.
Among the 300 policies in his manifesto are equal marriage for LGBTQ Thais, an end to military conscription, tackling business monopolies, and overhauling the education system to make it fit for the 21st century economy.
The party plans to scrap the military-drafted constitution and bring many of the military’s business interests under the finance ministry.
“It’s time to end the cycle of military coups, and the corruption in politics that opens the door to coups,” says PITA.
But the party’s most controversial proposal is to amend the lèse majesté law, which imposes long prison sentences for insulting the royal family, and to open a dialogue about the relationship between the monarchy and the Thai people.
Many of the 250 senators, who were appointed by the previous military government and must be involved in a parliamentary vote for the next prime minister, say they will prevent Move Forward from taking office over the issue.
“The sentiment of the era has changed,” says Pita.
“I think we now have the maturity and tolerance to talk about the monarchy. Even conservatives understand what the role of a constitutional monarchy should be in the 21st century.
“We won the votes of 14 million people. And they understood — it was clear, it was transparent — that this was one of the agendas that we wanted to push.”
The Move Forward leader believes his coalition, which currently holds 312 of the 500 seats in parliament’s lower house, will have the necessary support of 64 senators to secure the supermajority it needs.
Sources inside the Senate say this will be difficult to achieve as long as Move Forward remains committed to amending the lèse majesté law. But at least some senators, who have only a year left in their unelected term, feel uncomfortable opposing a coalition that won a clear majority in the polls.
Pita Limjaroenrat is also promising a new foreign policy.
Thailand is widely seen as punching above its weight in international affairs under the military-backed governments of the past decade, with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha taking little interest in foreign policy.
“Certainly we need to engage the international community more,” Pita says.
“We have to strike a balance. We have to talk more, and we have to support a rules-based world order. No words, no weight in foreign policy.
“And many of our problems, whether they’re economic, whether it’s air pollution, whether it’s the cost of fertilizer, come from the rest of the world.”
He says his government will work with Thailand’s ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to find a solution to Myanmar’s civil war, and that he will send more humanitarian aid across the Thai-Myanmar border. Will try to deliver.
