37-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra’s youngest daughter, has secured a majority of votes from 493 MPs in parliament to become Thailand’s youngest ever leader.

Following the Constitutional Court’s ouster of former PM Srettha Thavisin for appointing to a cabinet position a person with a prior criminal conviction, parliament’s special session to select a new PM was held today (16 August). This time, senators were no longer allowed to vote. Currently, there are 493 MPs eligible to cast votes, thus a candidate had to gain at least 247 votes to become PM.

Paetongtarn, who was the only candidate nominated, secured a majority of votes in parliament with 319 in favour, 145 against, and 27 abstentions.

She now becomes Thailand’s second female prime minister and the fourth member of the Shinawatra family to hold the top job after her father Thaksin Shinawatra, her uncle-in-law Somchai Wongsawat, and her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra, who was the first female PM in Thai history.

The prime minister who comes from a political dynasty.

Paetongtarn “Ung Ing” Shinawatra is the youngest of three children born to a telecom tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, who won massive election victories in the early 2000s before going into exiled after the 2006 military coup, and his then wife Potjaman Na Pombejra.

She has been exposed to politics from a very young age, having witnessed Thaksin performing his prime ministerial duties and accompanying her father on campaigns during his term in 2001-2006. Since then, the former PM’s daughter has been in the spotlight and well-known in Thai society.

Paetongtarn graduated with a political science degree from Chulalongkorn University and pursued a master’s degree in hotel management from the University of Surrey in England. After that, she returned to run the family’s hotel business.

The businessperson turned PM has investments in approximately 20 companies, worth a total of 8 billion baht. One of these companies is SC Asset, the Shinawatra family’s real estate business, where she is the largest shareholder.

Paetongtarn entered politics in 2021 as the Pheu Thai Party’s chairperson of the Engagement and Innovation Advisory. In 2023, she was nominated as one of the party’s PM candidates along with Srettha Thavisin and Chaikasem Nitisiri.

During Srettha’s tenure as PM, Paetongtarn was appointed chairperson of the National Soft Power Strategy Committee and deputy chairperson of the Healthcare Development Committee.

After the party’s former leader Cholnan Srikaew resigned over the party’s decision to form a coalition with military-linked parties, she was selected as the party’s new and first female leader.

After Srettha was toppled, the Pheu Thai Party's executive board decided to nominate Paetongtarn as candidate for Prime Minister. Like her predecessor, Paetongtarn has never been an MP or held a ministerial position.

Her tenure as PM has been widely anticipated, with speculation about whether history would repeat itself or if she could break the curse, as both her father and her aunt were forced to leave office following military coups in 2006 and 2014, and her uncle–in–law, who was PM briefly in 2008, faced party dissolution.