Thai king’s sister to run for PM

BANGKOK, February 8 

The sister of Thailand’s king entered the race to become prime minister on Friday as the candidate of a populist party, an unprecedented foray into politics by a royal that instantly upended the first election since a 2014 military coup.

Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi, 67, the elder sister of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, was nominated by a party loyal to ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra, the figure at the centre of years of political turbulence and rival street protests that have riven Thai society.

One of her chief opponents in the March 24 election will be Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who was army chief when he led the 2014 coup and now heads the ruling junta, who also announced his candidacy on Friday.

Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932 but the royal family has wielded great influence and commands the devotion of millions. However,  King Maha Vajiralongkorn said his elder sister’s announcement is “inappropriate” and unconstitutional, likely sinking her candidacy for a populist opposition party.

The nomination of a member of the royal family by the pro-Thaksin Thai Raksa Chart party could transform an election that had been viewed as a straightforward battle between Thaksin’s populists and their allies, on the one hand, and the royalist-military establishment on the other.

“This is a profound development that will shape the contours and dynamics of Thai politics before and after the election ... Thai Raksa Chart is a leading contender now,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst said.

Ubolratana relinquished her royal titles in 1972 when she married an American, a fellow student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Peter Jensen. She lived in the United States for more than 26 years before they divorced in 1998. She thanked her supporters in an Instagram post.

Rivalry between the Bangkok-centred, royalist elites and Thaksin and his rural-based supporters has brought street protests, military coups, and violent clashes over almost 15 years.

Thaksin and his party have been accused by their enemies of being opposed to the monarchy, which they have always rejected. Pundits were left guessing whether her nomination was a bid to heal those divisions, with the approval of the king who assumed the throne in 2016, or a bold gambit by Thaksin loyalists to undercut the royalist appeal of the pro-establishment parties. — Reuters

After storied life, she sets her sight on a new role

• She is a Thai princess who became a champion sailor, married a foreign commoner, earned two degrees in the United States, starred in a soap opera and tragically lost her son in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
• Now Thailand’s Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi has set her sights on a new role: prime minister of the Southeast Asian kingdom. It is unclear whether her brother, the king, approves of her candidacy
• But Ubolratana has disregarded royal tradition before, most notably by marrying an American fellow student Peter Jensen while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when she was 21 years old
• She was required to give up the titles Her Royal Highness and Chao Fa (Lady of the Sky), which were bestowed on her birth in 1951 in Switzerland, where her father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was attending university.
• Ubolratana also starred as a historical princess in a 2003 Thai soap opera set in the Ayutthaya period of the 14th to 18th centuries, and in an action movie in which she played a tough journalist facing danger as she works to uncover a dastardly plot
• After divorce, her new life in Thailand was marred by tragedy in 2004. When the tsunami struck, Ubolratana was on holiday with two of her kids. They fled the giant waves but her 21-yr-old son was swept away and died