Anutin Charnvirakul
Anutin Charnvirakul became Prime Minister of Thailand in September 2025, having spent the preceding years as the country's most consequential swing player. Born in 1966, he is the son of Chavarat Charnvirakul, a construction magnate and former interior minister, and inherited Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction, one of the largest builders in the country. He is a qualified pilot and flew during the pandemic. He led the Bhumjaithai Party, a mid-sized party built on provincial networks in the north-east, which has held the balance of power in successive parliaments without ever coming close to winning one. As Public Health Minister and Deputy Prime Minister from 2019 he managed the pandemic response and pushed through the decriminalisation of cannabis in June 2022 — the first country in Asia to do it, and done without an accompanying regulatory framework, which produced a large unregulated market and a subsequent partial reversal. He became Interior Minister in 2023 in the coalition with Pheu Thai, the party of the Shinawatra family, after the election winner Move Forward was blocked from office by the appointed Senate. He withdrew from that coalition in June 2025 over a leaked telephone call between Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Hun Sen of Cambodia, during a border conflict that had produced armed clashes. She was removed by the Constitutional Court in August, and Anutin was elected by parliament with the support of the opposition People's Party on a commitment to dissolve within four months. The arrangement was a minority government dependent on an opposition party that extracted a dissolution commitment as its price. He is the fourth prime minister in three years.
- Lived: 1966 CE – ?
- Nationality: Thai
- Roles: Prime Minister of Thailand (2025-present)
