On Thursday, the Thai parliament voted against the candidacy for prime minister of the country of Pita Limjaroenrat, of the reformist Kao Klai (Let’s Go Forward) party. Pita obtained 323 votes in the plenary meeting of the parliament, compared to the 375 that would have been needed. The rejection is not definitive, given that two more votes are scheduled for next week, on July 19, and that in the Thai system one can go on indefinitely until a candidate is found.
Pita (as he is called by both Thais and the media) was the only candidate for prime minister from the party that won elections in May, with 38 percent of the vote, far ahead of the second most voted party, Pheu Thai, of the centre-right, which instead obtained 28 percent. After the vote Kao Klai and Pheu Thai had formed a coalition with six other parties, which today controls 312 seats out of the total 500 seats in the House.
However, there was a rather high risk that Pita could not be elected on the first ballot: his coalition did indeed obtain a majority in the House but not in the Senate, whose members are chosen by the military junta currently in power in Thailand. In the end, on Thursday, Pita got only 13 votes from the senators (34 voted against and 159 abstained). Between now and July 19, Pita will have to try to convince the senators who abstained. An alternative is that Pheu Thai could decide to withdraw from the coalition and propose its own candidate for prime minister, aware of the fact that deputies and senators close to the junta would be more inclined to vote for a party closer to the establishment.