Thailand’s Parliament will open today for the first time since Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party won a majority last month, paving the way for lawmakers to select her as the country’s first female prime minister.
The Election Commission has certified all but four of 500 winning candidates in the July 3 vote, discarding complaints aiming to thwart the sister of exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra from taking power. Court rulings and a coup have overturned three previous Thaksin election wins since 2005.
“They won a landslide so it will be easier to manage the country,” said Suwat Bumrungchartudom, an analyst at Bangkok- based Bualuang Securities Pcl. “The coalition is quite solid. The question now is whether they can follow through on their commitments before the election.”
Yingluck, who has assembled a six-party coalition with 60 percent of parliamentary seats, is putting together a Cabinet to make good on pledges to raise the minimum wage, boost rice prices, build high-speed train lines and give tablet computers to students. The planned spending makes inflation a greater concern than threats to growth, the central bank said July 27.
“We would like to start working soonest,” Yingluck told reporters on July 29. She said her Cabinet would likely be unveiled around the middle of the month.
Thailand’s baht in July had its biggest monthly advance in more than three years after global investors bought the nation’s assets on optimism that political stability will take hold. Investors bought $1.2 billion more Thai equities than they sold last month, the most since March 2010, exchange data shows, and a net $4.2 billion of government debt, according to the Thai Bond Market Association.
Full Article: Thai Parliament to Open as Thaksin’s Sister Set for Premiership.