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In Thailand, he promised change. However, will He Be Permitted to Lead?

Unless the military intervenes to prevent it, Pita Limjaroenrat is certain to succeed Thaksin Shinawatra as the country’s next prime minister.

Pita Limjaroenrat followed his American classmates who were running for former President Barack Obama at the time he was a Harvard undergraduate in 2008. He gained insight into electoral politics as a result of the experience, which included door-to-door canvassing, polling data analysis, and the placement of campaign flags on front lawns.

In his recent campaign in Thailand, where he shocked the nation’s political establishment by leading his progressive Move Forward Party to a historic win, Mr. Pita said that he had implemented the lessons he had acquired in Massachusetts fifteen years earlier.

The only two political forces that Thai voters have ever known were those of a populist billionaire living in exile and a conservative royalist and militarist. Following nine years of military rule that was preceded by a coup, supporters saw Mr. Pita, 42, as the candidate who symbolized reform and a return to democracy. He made campaign promises to loosen the military’s control over Thai politics and change the law that makes it illegal to criticize the monarchy.In an interview with The New York Times, he stated, “What I now need to do is find a road-map that bridges that gap between a functioning democracy and half-baked democracy at the very end of nine-year rule by a military coup.”

Mr. Pita needs to win over a 250-member, military-appointed Senate by garnering enough support in the 500-member House of Representatives to assume the position. He actually needs 376 votes. He only has 314 at this time.Already, numerous senators have stated they would not back a candidate who poses such a danger to the current quo. Thais are now waiting to see if their preferred candidate will be permitted to take the helm or if he would be prevented from becoming prime minister by the ruling elite, a scenario that might destabilize Thai politics.

In order for a Senate packed with military friends to jointly elect the head of state, Thai generals revised the Constitution in 2017. The Election Commission has received a complaint against Mr. Pita for failing to disclose that he had shares in a media company that had since gone out of business and that he had inherited from his father.

As of yet, Mr. Pita has dismissed the request for an investigation, claiming that he has already disclosed the shares to the law enforcement. He said that he thought there was a number of senators who had “felt their conscience” and realized the repercussions of defying the 25 million Thais who cast change votes. Just 14 senators have declared that they will support him.Mr. Pita received a dual degree from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Kennedy School. During his stay in the US, he developed campaign planning skills, which he applied to this race by using data to contact voters in 160 districts.

The majority of Mr. Pita’s career was spent in consulting and business, first as managing director of his father’s rice-bran oil company and later as a senior executive for Grab, the ride-hailing business that bought Uber in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Pita gained a reputation as a strong orator during his campaign, influencing voters with his talks and well-groomed appearance.

He declared his admiration for José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano, a former president of Uruguay who was imprisoned and subjected to torture during the regime. He is reading Senator Bernie Sanders’ book “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism”. Rage Against the Machine, The Strokes, and Metallica are a few of his favorite musical acts. A Thai woman performing a faux wedding with a cutout of Mr. Pita, who is divorced and has a small daughter, is featured in a popular TikTok video.

Duncan McCargo, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen, said that for many middle-class Thais, especially upper-middle class Thais, he is like the perfect son-in-law that you’d like to have — very educated, accomplished, good-looking, and poised.

In 2018, Mr. Pita became interested in the philosophy of Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the party’s founder, and within a short time, he was invited to join. After Future Forward was disbanded and its key leaders were banned from politics for ten years by Thailand’s Constitutional Court in 2020, he became the helm of Move Forward.

In the event that he wins the position of prime minister, Mr. Pita has pledged to reevaluate Thailand’s foreign policy, claiming that the nation will “not be part of the Chinese umbrella or the American umbrella,” but rather, will have the freedom to choose its own future. He tweeted in March 2022, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, that Russia needed to “retrieve” its troops right now.

The candidate’s strong response to the invasion was “largely personal,” according to Fuadi Pitsuwan, a fellow at Chiang Mai University and Mr. Pita’s foreign policy advisor. He will be a foreign policy pioneer, which is uncommon in Thailand.

There have been repercussions for Mr. Pita’s reputation. 2019 saw him accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife Chutima Teepanart, an actress with whom he shares a kid. Mr. Pita was declared not accountable by a family court. Multiple requests for comment from Ms. Chutima went unanswered.

Mr. Pita stated in an interview that “there was never any domestic violence, whether it be physical abuse or emotional abuse, in my family.”

Mr. Pita was raised by a prosperous and well-connected family. His late father worked as the agricultural minister’s advisor, and his uncle was formerly a close friend of Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist millionaire whose youngest daughter was one of Mr. Pita’s opponents in the race.

In the early 1980s, his uncle served as minister of commerce; but, after leaving banking, he was imprisoned for wrongdoing, which Mr. Pita characterized as being politically driven. A memorable childhood experience for him was seeing his uncle in jail, which opened his eyes to “how brutal or dirty politics could be,” he said.Over the years, Mr. Pita claimed he had become fascinated by how Thailand appeared to be mired in a never-ending cycle of political unrest, which was either sparked by someone “using the king to destroy a political opponent or using the monarchy as an excuse to fight for something.”

He began researching other nations with constitutional monarchies, such as England, Japan, and Norway, and claimed to have begun to understand why the Thai monarchy’s relationship with the people was “going downhill” with each passing decade.With Move Forward, he hopes “to have a comprehensive discussion in Parliament about what the role of the monarchy in a constitutional democracy should be in modern Thailand,” an idea that was once frowned upon by many Thais for whom the royal family has become a part of everyday life.

In response to calls for limits on the monarchy’s authority, which were sparked by demonstrations in 2020, the military and royalists have banded together to defend the institution.

The military who launched the prior coup and whose party lost the election, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, ordered a crackdown in response to the protests. Since then, detentions for opposing the monarchy have included more than 200 protestors, including 17 juveniles.

At the last protest held prior to the voting, Mr. Pita emphasized to the crowd that even a 15-year-old girl had been imprisoned for breaking the royal criticism statute. He addressed tens of thousands of his fans on Monday as they celebrated his electoral triumph.

In the middle of Bangkok, he spoke to the audience while standing in front of a huge photo of the king and declared that “a new day for the people has arrived.”

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