Global Courant 2023-05-19 16:13:33
When Pita Limjaroenrat was a student at Harvard in 2008, he shadowed his American classmates who were campaigning for former President Barack Obama at the time. The experience gave him a window into electoral politics, from phone banks and polls to knocking on doors and putting campaign flags on front yards.
Fifteen years later, Mr. Pita said he used what he learned in Massachusetts to aid his recent campaign in Thailand, where he stunned the country’s political establishment by leading his progressive Move Forward Party to a momentous victory. to lead.
For decades, Thai voters have known only two dominant political forces: one led by conservative royalists and militarists and the other by a populist billionaire living in exile. Supporters saw Pita, 42, as the candidate representing change and a return to democracy after nine years of military rule that preceded a coup. On the stub, he pledged to undo the military’s grip on Thai politics and revise a law criminalizing criticism of the monarchy.
But his path to prime minister remains uncertain.
“What I need to do now is find a roadmap that bridges the gap between a functioning democracy and a half-baked democracy at the end of a nine-year military coup rule,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
To take on the role, Mr. Pita must gain enough support in the 500-member House of Representatives to overcome a 250-member military-appointed Senate. To be precise, he needs 376 votes. So far he only has 314.
Several senators have already said they would not support a candidate who so threatens the status quo. Now the Thais wait to see if their choice will be allowed to lead or if he will be stopped by the ruling powers from becoming prime minister, an outcome that could plunge the country into political chaos.
Thai generals rewrote the constitution in 2017 so that a senate full of military allies could jointly determine the top leader. Conservatives are counting on an Elections Commission complaint against Mr Pita for failing to disclose that he owned shares in a now-defunct media company he inherited from his father.
So far, Mr Pita has rejected the petition to investigate him, saying he had already declared the shares to authorities. He also said he believed there was a group of senators who had “felt their conscience” and understood the consequences of going against the 25 million Thais who voted for change. Only 14 senators have indicated they will vote for him.
Mr. Pita jointly graduated from Harvard Kennedy School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. From his time in the United States, he learned how to map out a campaign strategy, which he deployed in this election by using data to reach voters in 160 counties.
Most of Mr. Pita’s career has been in consulting and business, as general manager of the rice bran oil business his father started, and then senior executive for Grab, the ride-hailing company that launched Uber in Southeast Asia. took over.
As a candidate, Mr. Pita developed a reputation as a clear orator, winning over audiences with his speeches and well-groomed appearance.
He said he admires José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano, the former president of Uruguay who was tortured and imprisoned during the country’s military dictatorship. He reads “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism” by Senator Bernie Sanders. Some of his favorite bands are Metallica, The Strokes and Rage Against the Machine. A viral video on TikTok shows a Thai woman holding a mock wedding ceremony with a cutout of Mr. Pita, who is divorced and has a young daughter.
“For much of the middle class, especially upper-middle class Thais, he’s the ideal son-in-law you’d want — highly educated, capable, handsome, poised,” said Duncan McCargo, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen.
Mr. Pita was attracted to the ideas of Future Forward party founder Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit in 2018 and was asked to join within a few months. He became the leader of Move Forward after the Constitutional Court of Thailand dissolved Future Forward in 2020 and banned its senior executives from entering politics for 10 years.
If his bid for prime minister is successful, Mr Pita has pledged to review Thailand’s foreign policy, saying the country “will not be part of the Chinese umbrella or the US umbrella” but will have the option to make its own fate to decide, Mr. Pita. Pitta said. In March 2022, after Moscow invaded Ukraine, he wrote on Twitter that the Russians must immediately “retrieve” their troops.
“A lot of it is personal,” said Fuadi Pitsuwan, a fellow at Chiang Mai University and foreign policy advisor to Mr Pita, referring to the candidate’s strong response to the invasion. “He will be a foreign policy leader, which is rare in Thailand.”
Mr. Pita’s reputation has not gone unscathed. His ex-wife, Chutima Teepanart, an actress with whom he shares a daughter, accused him of domestic violence in 2019. A family court ruled that Mr. Pita was not guilty of the charge. Ms. Chutima did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In an interview, Mr. Pita said: “There was never any domestic violence, be it physical abuse or emotional abuse, in my family.”
Mr. Pita was born into a wealthy, well-connected family. His late father served as an adviser to the Agriculture Minister and his uncle was once a close associate of Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist billionaire whose youngest daughter was one of Mr. Pita’s rivals in the election.
His uncle was a former Commerce Secretary in the early 1980s, but was later imprisoned for misconduct while a banker, a case Mr Pita described as politically motivated. A striking childhood memory is visiting his uncle in prison, which made him see “how dirty or how brutal politics can be,” he said.
Over the years, Mr Pita said he was struck by how Thailand seemed constantly stuck in a cycle of political unrest, caused by people “using the king to destroy a political opponent or using the monarchy as an excuse to fight for something”.
He began studying other countries with constitutional monarchies, including England, Japan and Norway, and said he was beginning to understand why the relationship between the Thai monarchy and the people “went downhill” with each passing decade.
With Move Forward, he wants to “have a comprehensive discussion in parliament about what the monarchy’s role should be in a constitutional democracy in modern Thailand”, an idea that was once considered taboo among many Thais for whom the royal family is a fixed value in everyday life.
In response to calls for scrutiny of the monarchy’s power – precipitated by protests in 2020 – the military and royalists have come together to defend the institution.
In the wake of the protests, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who led the previous coup and whose party was defeated in the election, ordered a crackdown. More than 200 protesters, including 17 minors, have since been detained for criticizing the monarchy.
At a final meeting before the vote, Mr Pita reminded the crowd that even a 15-year-old girl was among those detained for breaking the royal criticism law. On Monday, he spoke to thousands of his supporters as they celebrated his election victory.
Standing in front of a giant portrait of the king in downtown Bangkok, he addressed the crowd, telling them “a new day has dawned for the people.”
Ryn Jirenuwat and Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.
