Thailand's Srettha elected PM as ally Thaksin returns from exile and goes to jail

Srettha Thavisin of the populist Pheu Thai party has won the backing of parliament to become Thailand’s next prime minister, paving the way to a new coalition government and an end to weeks of uncertainty and political impasse.

Property tycoon Srettha ‘s victory, with 482 votes out of 727 politicians present on Tuesday, ends months of suspense, legal wrangling, and horse-trading that followed the May elections.

The progressive Move Forward Party, which won the most votes in the national election, was blocked from taking power by conservative senators.

The vote came hours after the Pheu Thai party’s billionaire figurehead Thaksin Shinawatra made a historic homecoming after years as a fugitive in self-imposed exile.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Bangkok, said Srettha had won a strong mandate.

“It is out with the old and in with the new. Srettha got over the 376 benchmark votes that he needed in both the lower and upper house. Interestingly he did that with more than 150 votes in the Senate, the Upper House, which is all appointed by the military,” he said.

Political neophyte Srettha will be tasked with forming and holding together a potentially fragile coalition that will include parties backed by the royalist military, which overthrew Pheu Thai governments in the 2006 and 2014 coups.

Srettha will lead a coalition of 11 parties that includes two pro-military parties affiliated with outgoing Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

The parliamentary vote came hours after divisive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra returned to Thailand after years of self-imposed exile, mostly in Dubai, to face criminal charges after being overthrown in a 2006 military coup.

His return was an emotional moment for supporters of the 74-year-old billionaire, who won the loyalty of millions with populist policies that directed attention, and funding, to the country’s largely rural, often impoverished, north.

Thaksin and parties backed by him struggled with the military for years. Thaksin left Thailand 15 years ago, following a 2006 coup that cut short his second term as prime minister and sparked years of upheaval.

A Pheu Thai government led by Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra was toppled in 2014 by then-army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is now the outgoing prime minister after voters largely rejected military-linked parties in May.