Power shift: Paetongtarn with her husband Pidok Sooksawas after the official announcement in Bangkok. — Bloomberg
THE parliament elected political neophyte Paetongtarn Shinawatra as its youngest prime minister yesterday, only a day after she was thrust into the spotlight amid an unrelenting power struggle between the country’s warring elites.
The 37-year-old daughter of divisive political heavyweight Thaksin Shinawatra sailed through a house vote and now faces a baptism of fire, just two days after ally Srettha Thavisin was dismissed as premier by a judiciary central to Thailand’s two decades of intermittent turmoil.
