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Paetongtarn for PM? Thaksin’s daughter banks on nostalgia to win Thailand election
- Paetongtarn Shinawatra is far ahead in the opinion polls, with twice the support of incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha
- Her Pheu Thai party’s slogan, ‘Think Big, Act Smart’, takes aim at incremental reforms under military-backed governments since a 2014 coup
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Touting her billionaire family’s legacy of populism and massive election victories, Thailand’s Paetongtarn Shinawatra is emerging as the candidate to beat in coming polls, betting that nostalgia can win millions of working class votes.
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Paetongtarn, 36, is campaigning hard in the vote-rich rural strongholds of the Shinawatra family’s Pheu Thai political juggernaut, hoping to reignite the kind of fervour that swept father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck to power in unprecedented landslides.
Political neophyte Paetongtarn is promising Pheu Thai will complete unfinished business from three stints in office since 2001, all of which were cut short by court rulings and military coups that it says were orchestrated by Thailand’s conservative establishment.
“We managed to fix everything in the first year but then four years later we were ousted by a coup, so there are things that we have not achieved,” Paetongtarn said in her first formal interview with foreign media ahead of the election, expected in May.
“So we go on each stage to tell people how our policies can change their lives. And only through stable politics can people’s lives change in a sustainable manner,” she said, while campaigning in the northeast.
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