Staunch support: Voters holding portraits of Pita during a protest in Bangkok after the May general election. — AP
Move Forward leader and Prime Ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat is the only Thai to make it to Time magazine’s “TIME100 Next” list for 2023.
The US-based magazine on Wednesday published this year’s list of emerging leaders from around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership, in a campaign that has been held annually since 2019.
The magazine divides the list into five categories: Artists, Phenoms, Innovators, Advocates and Leaders, with Pita named in the “Leaders” group.
“The only thing more stunning than Pita’s election victory was the radical agenda he ran on to achieve it,” wrote Time’s Charlie Campbell.
“The Harvard graduate’s upstart Move Forward Party secured 38% of votes in Thailand’s May 14 ballot by promising to bridle the nation’s armed forces and revered royal palace, scrap its controversial royal defamation law, and end military conscription. But the byzantine nature of Thai democracy means Pita’s path to power has been blocked by an unelected Senate and a flurry of legal challenges,” he wrote.
Campbell quoted one of Pita’ interviews, in which he said that his political awakening began in New Zealand, where he was sent to school as a youngster.
“I’m proud of what we have achieved,” Pita says. “And we can do a lot more to provide checks and balances in parliament and speak on behalf of the people.”
Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, leader of the now-defunct Future Forward Party, the predecessor of Move Forward, also made the list in the Leaders category in 2019.
Other Thais who made the list that year included Lalisa Manobal of K-pop group Blackpink and Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the prolific architect behind the popular Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park. — The Nation/ANN
