Thai Government Headed, For The Moment, By Former Student Leftist

2025-07-12 02:01:33

(MENAFN- Asia Times) BANGKOK – Thailand's struggle with democracy has resulted in three very different prime ministers in three days with Phumtham Wechayachai becoming the newest caretaker leader, after a court suspended former Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra for alleged“ethical misconduct.”

So, who is Acting Prime Minister Phumtham (“POOM-tom”)?

Phumtham, 72, is a veteran politician who was commerce minister and caretaker prime minister in 2024 and Paetongtarn's defense minister during 2025.

Some generals in the US-trained military were wary of Phumtham when Paetongtarn appointed the civilian as defense minister, because in 1976 he had joined an anti-military leftist student movement and acquired the nickname“Big Comrade” for voicing speeches against the return of military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn.

When the military violently crushed the university students' protests – by official count killing 46 students although there were estimates of more than 100 dead – Phumtham fled into the countryside with hundreds of others who were welcomed by Thailand's hardened China-backed communist guerrillas.

Students who survived those battles eventually surrendered and received amnesty. Some joined mainstream politics after changing their political views.

“I went to escape the violence,” Mr. Phumtham said last year, denying the military's suspicions that he believed in communism.“It was not only me. There were other students, too.”

The dizzying changes at the top of this Southeast Asian, Buddhist-majority US ally are an attempt by Paetongtarn to keep herself and her Shinawatra family's dynastic Pheu Thai (For Thais) Party in her fragile ruling coalition, after the powerful Constitutional Court suspended her from the prime ministership on July 1.

In a cabinet shuffle hours before her suspension, Paetongtarn appointed herself as culture minister to remain in the government while the court deliberates her fate, which could come quickly or take weeks.

Paetongtarn, 38, faces a possible ban from politics for 10 years, or worse punishment, for criticizing a Royal Thai Army commander during her leaked phone call to Cambodia's de facto leader, Senate President Hun Sen , on June 15.

As a result of Paetongtarn's cabinet shakeup, the military was given only a new acting defense minister, General Nattphon Narkphanit, after Phumtham resigned as defense minister to become acting prime minister.

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