The champion of the electoral race, Thailand’s Move Forward Party, is holding on to the hope of reinstating their party leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, as their nominee for the position of Prime Minister. It’s their belief that the Senators will rally behind him and offer sufficient support. The party’s Secretary-General, Chaithawat Tulanon, made known that the party has made an appeal to the ombudsman. The purpose? To request the Constitutional Court to verify whether Mr. Pita can be renominated in parliament as Prime Minister to helm a coalition government.
Their expectation is that the renomination will receive the green light, and there will be substantial backing from those Senators appointed by the military. Limjaroenrat was named the sole candidate for the Prime Minister’s office during a joint meeting of a 500-strong House of Representatives and the current 249 Senators on the 13th of July. However, he didn’t gain a majority vote, managing to put together support from only 324 votes via his eight-party alliance – a number quite shy of the required 375 votes.
The subsequent vote on the 19th of July in the parliament was to challenge his renomination. The opposition put forth the argument that a motion which had previously failed couldn’t be proposed once again within the same parliamentary session. According to them, this rule similarly applied to Mr. Pita’s nomination for the Prime Minister’s office.
Post denial, the Move Forward Party (MFP), victorious in 151 House seats, reached an amicable agreement to allow the Pheu Thai Party (their largest ally with 141 MPs) to step to the front of the line and nominate a candidate for the Prime Minister’s office. This is anticipated in a joint sitting slated for Thursday.
The Secretary-General of MFP indicated on Monday that his current belief is that roughly 56 Senators are on standby to pledge their support to MFP’s charge to lead the next government. Mr. Chaithawat acknowledged that numerous parties outside the eight-member coalition appeared open to extending their support to Pheu Thai, but this would only happen if MFP were excluded from the government. He emphasized, however, that there might be an alternate route should the eight parties maintain their unity.
The leaders of the eight parties had a meeting planned for Tuesday, as per Mr. Chaithawat’s words. “If Pheu Thai and Move Forward each make their move and no Prime Minister gets elected, society will start throwing questions at the Senators and the other political parties,” said Mr. Chaithawat. He utterly dismissed the possibility of parties with only a minority vote in the House forming the next government.
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