By Panarat Thepgumpanat and Kitiphong Thaichareon
BANGKOK (Reuters) -Thai politics were in chaos on Wednesday as the ruling Pheu Thai party said it had sought royal approval to dissolve the parliament for a new election, moments after the biggest group in the house said it would back another party to form a government.
The chief whip of the Pheu Thai party, which last week suffered the loss of its prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, to a court ruling, told Reuters the party had decided to forge ahead with seeking a snap election.
Moments earlier, the opposition People’s Party, which controls nearly a third of lower house seats, said it was backing the rival Bhumjaithai party’s ambitious leader Anutin Charnvirakul for premier, a potential game-changer that could break days of political deadlock.
Paetongtarn’s dismissal last Friday for an ethics violation triggered a scramble for power, with her Pheu Thai party racing to shore up a fragile coalition with a slender majority as its former alliance partner Bhumjaithai mounted a bold challenge to form its own government.
Her removal was the latest twist in a tumultuous, two-decade battle for power among Thailand’s rival elites, with Paetongtarn the sixth premier from or backed by the billionaire Shinawatra family to be ousted by the military or judiciary and the second in the space of a year.
Pheu Thai’s move to dissolve the house comes as the once-dominant populist party founded by Paetongtarn’s billionaire father Thaksin Shinawatra has been haemorrhaging support and facing protests against its rule.
There are conflicting opinions among law experts in Thailand, however, as to whether a caretaker government has the authority to seek house dissolution.
People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut said the party would back Bhumjaithai to prevent the return of a coalition government that was not fit to rule again, but it would not join its government.
He said a parliamentary vote on a new prime minister could take place on Friday.
“There is a risk that there would be a return of the old coalition which has failed to run the country in the last two years, and a risk of the return of the coup maker as prime minister,” he told a press conference, referring to Prayuth Chan-ocha, a general who seized power in 2014 and remains eligible to become premier, despite retiring.
(Reporting by Kitiphong Thaiharoen, Panarat Thepgumpanat, Devjyot Ghoshal, Panu Wongcha-um and Chayut Setboonsarng; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by John Mair)
