Pita Limjaroenrat

Pita Limjaroenrat won the Thai election of May 2023 and was prevented from becoming prime minister by a senate the previous military government had appointed. He was educated at Harvard and MIT, took over his father's rice bran oil business at twenty-five after his father's death, and led the Move Forward Party, successor to a party dissolved by the courts in 2020. Its programme included conscription reform, breaking up business monopolies, same-sex marriage and - the point everything turned on - amending Article 112, the lese-majeste law under which criticism of the monarchy carries up to fifteen years per count. Move Forward won the most seats and about fourteen million votes. Under the constitution written after the 2014 coup, the prime minister was chosen by both houses, and the 250 senators had been appointed by the junta; they voted him down. The constitutional court then suspended him over shares in a defunct television company, and in August 2024 dissolved his party and banned its executive from politics for ten years. Its members reconstituted as the People's Party. Same-sex marriage passed in 2024 under the government that replaced him. Move Forward had also won Bangkok outright and made deep inroads into provinces the conservative parties had held for decades, which is why the result was read as generational rather than regional. Thailand has had a dozen successful coups since 1932 and roughly twenty constitutions. The appointed senators' power to choose a prime minister expired in May 2024, nine months after they had used it for the last time.

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