What to Know About Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand’s New and Youngest Prime Minister
(Bloomberg) -- Thailand’s new prime minister is a scion of the country’s influential Shinawatra clan and the youngest person to assume the post, as she looks to bring stability after her predecessor was ousted by a court over ethics violations.
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Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 37, is the second woman to serve as Thailand’s prime minister and she follows two former premiers from her family. Thaksin Shinawatra, her billionaire father who was in the post from 2001 to 2006 before being pushed out in a military coup, returned to Thailand from 15 years of self-imposed exile last year and is now expected to play a bigger role in Thai politics.
Her most immediate tasks will be to ease voter concerns about the high cost of living and try to end a period of political turbulence that has unnerved foreign investors.
Who is Paetongtarn?
Known by her nickname Ing, she is the youngest daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the patriarch of the political dynasty that has dominated most Thai elections since the turn of the century.
Paetongtarn studied political science at Thailand’s prestigious Chulalongkorn University and later received a master’s degree in international hotel management from the University of Surrey in the UK. At 17, she made headlines when she did a part-time job at McDonald’s.
She is married to Pidok Sooksawas, a commercial pilot. The couple have two children, including a baby boy that Paetongtarn gave birth to on the campaign trail for last year’s election.
In October, Pheu Thai members elected her as the movement’s new leader, strengthening the Shinawatra clan’s grip on the government’s dominant party.
2. What did she do before politics?
Most of Paetongtarn’s professional experience from 2011 until she entered politics was with the Shinawatra family business empire, which spans real estate, hospitality and telecommunications.
Until earlier this year, she was listed as chief executive officer of the hotel business of Rende Development Co., which is run by her sister, Pintongta Shinawatra Kunakornwong, and includes the luxurious Rosewood Hotel in Bangkok.
She is the largest shareholder of publicly traded property firm SC Asset Corp. Pcl, with a 28.5% stake worth about 5.2 billion baht ($152 million), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Before formally taking the post of prime minister, Thai law requires that Paetongtarn must relinquish her business roles and comply with share ownership rules.
3. How did she become a player in politics?
Paetongtarn had a front-row seat to Thaksin’s career. At 20, she hunkered down in a safe house when tanks patrolled Bangkok streets as the army seized power from her father. Two years later, Thaksin left Thailand to avoid a corruption conviction he said was politically motivated.
The Shinawatra heir formally started her political career when she joined Pheu Thai in 2021 as a director of the party’s innovation and inclusiveness committee. Two years later, she fronted Pheu Thai’s pre-election campaign and ran as one of its three prime ministerial candidates, pledging to end nearly a decade of rule by military-aligned administrations helmed by Prayuth Chan-Ocha.
4. How did she come to power?
Her premiership was the latest in a chain of events that started in 2023 when Pheu Thai failed to win a national election — a first for a Thaksin-linked party in more than two decades. It lost to the youth-oriented Move Forward Party, which campaigned harder against military rule and advocated bold changes to a law forbidding criticism of the monarchy.
The emergence of Move Forward created a common enemy for Pheu Thai and the royalist establishment, and they decided to bury their differences and form a governing alliance to keep Move Forward out of power. The deal allowed Thaksin to return to Thailand after 15 years of shuttling between Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and London, having fled Thailand in 2008 to avoid corruption charges.
Thaksin ally Srettha Thavisin was picked to be the new premier, but relations between Pheu Thai and the establishment remained strained, and the country’s Constitutional Court removed Srettha from office on Aug. 14 over an ethics case.
To keep the premiership, Pheu Thai had to nominate one of its two remaining prime ministerial candidates. The party’s lawmakers and executive members chose Paetongtarn over 75-year-old Chaikasem Nitisiri, and the coalition partners endorsed her leadership. Her nomination was put to vote in parliament, and she won.
Her elevation represents a test of the Shinawatras’ enduring influence. Thaksin’s party was despised for more than a decade by the royalists who control some of the nation’s most powerful institutions and businesses.
Paetongtarn has vowed to end the cycle of coups against her family. Thaksin was ousted in 2006. The government of Yingluck, Thaksin’s sister, was toppled in 2014 and she’s still in exile. But Paetongtarn will still need the support of the pro-royalist conservatives with whom Pheu Thai remains in coalition.
5. What will be her administration’s policies?
With Paetongtarn inheriting the premiership from a party ally, major policy changes are not expected. Her government is likely to focus on bolstering growth through looser fiscal policies as well as tackling the high cost of living and near-record household debt. She’s advocated for lower interest rates and slammed the central bank, saying its autonomy posed an “obstacle” to resolving the country’s economic issues.
However, the change in leadership may provide a convenient pretext for her government to abandon a $14 billion digital wallet cash handout program that had been a flagship policy of Pheu Thai and the centerpiece of Srettha’s push to bolster economic growth.
When asked about it by reporters on the eve of her nomination, Paetongtarn only said she would review the program after she takes power.
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