{"id":55573,"date":"2026-03-19T07:33:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=55573"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:37:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:37:44","slug":"thailands-anutin-returns-to-power-with-broad-backing-and-nationalist-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=55573","title":{"rendered":"Thailand&#8217;s Anutin returns to power with broad backing and nationalist push"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>BANGKOK, March 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Weeks before Thailand&#8217;s February general election, Anutin Charnvirakul stood at a rally in the \u200bcapital Bangkok and declared that his Bhumjaithai Party should be the automatic choice for any patriotic Thai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I promise to you all that I will safeguard Thailand \u200cwith my life,&#8221; the 59-year-old prime minister said. &#8220;Just choose Bhumjaithai to guard the country, to help safeguard all of our land.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The stump speech captured Anutin&#8217;s strategy of riding a wave of nationalism washing through Thailand in the wake of a fierce border conflict with Cambodia last year &#8211; a gamble that paid off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/thailands-pheu-thai-party-join-bhumjaithai-party-led-coalition-pm-anutin-says-2026-02-13\/\">Bhumjaithai won<\/a>&nbsp;191 seats in the 500-member parliament, trouncing the progressive People&#8217;s Party, and then cobbled together a coalition of \u200b16 parties &#8211; including the populist Pheu Thai &#8211; that together hold 292 seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The alliance&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/thailands-anutin-seeks-new-mandate-parliament-votes-prime-minister-2026-03-18\/\">voted in parliament<\/a>&nbsp;on Thursday to re-elect&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/thailands-new-prime-minister-anutin-charnvirakul-2026-03-19\/\">Anutin<\/a>&nbsp;as prime minister, making him the first \u200bThai premier to be voted back to office in two decades, underlining the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/tumultuous-two-decades-thailands-politics-2026-02-05\/\">political instability<\/a>&nbsp;that has long plagued Southeast Asia&#8217;s second-largest economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A veteran operator, once best \u200bknown for championing Thailand&#8217;s legalisation of cannabis in 2022, Anutin\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/how-thailands-anutin-charnvirakul-rose-cannabis-crusader-prime-minister-2025-09-05\/\">manoeuvred into the prime minister&#8217;s office<\/a>\u00a0with a minority government following his predecessor&#8217;s ouster by a court order last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Nationalism is \u2060in the heart of everybody in the Bhumjaithai party,&#8221; he told reporters as the results trickled in last month. &#8220;Our people have given us more than what we expected.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BANGKOK, March 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Weeks before Thailand&#8217;s February general election, Anutin Charnvirakul stood at a rally in the \u200bcapital Bangkok and declared that his Bhumjaithai Party should be the automatic choice for any patriotic Thai. &#8220;I promise to you all that I will safeguard Thailand \u200cwith my life,&#8221; the 59-year-old prime minister said. &#8220;Just choose Bhumjaithai to guard the country, to help safeguard all of our land.&#8221; The stump speech captured Anutin&#8217;s strategy of riding a wave of nationalism washing through Thailand in the wake of a fierce border conflict with Cambodia last year &#8211; a gamble that paid&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55575,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55573\/revisions\/55575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}