Pita not giving up on renewed bid for PM

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

PRIME MINISTER-DESIGNATE Pita Limjaroenrat said today (July 13) he is ultimately not giving up on his renewed effort to take the helm of government next week.

The Move Forward leader told reporters at parliament he will go on with his sustained bid for elected premiership despite today’s defeat as many of the lawmakers have chosen to not lend him adequate support for the top post of the executive branch.

The pro-Pita votes cast by the lawmakers only accounted for 324 votes, 13 of which came from senators, but it was 51 votes short of a minimum of 375 accounting for more than half the combined total of MPs and senators as required by law.

That compared to 199 MPs and senators who abstained from voting and 182 others who cast anti-Pita votes.

Without elaborating, Pita said the Move Forward “strategies” earlier mapped out to muster more support from the senators will be tweaked to the extent that the number of yea votes from the senators will pivotally increase next time.

The prime minister-designate said he and his partisan colleagues are yet to find out what could possibly have kept as many as 33 senators from attending the joint House/Senate meeting to pick a prime minister.

Nonetheless, Pita said he will not back down from his campaign policy to amend the draconian lese majeste law, better known as Section 112, and that such phenomenal legislative venture of his progressive party may not have decisively prompted the loss of many of the senators’ votes for him.

House Speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha has earlier remarked that the Move Forward leader will likely be given a second chance, tentatively scheduled for July 19, of being named and voted for prime minister after he has failed to make it at the first go today.

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Top and Front Page: Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat. Both photos: Thai Rath

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