Paetongtarn becomes Thailand's youngest prime minister

On Friday, Thailand's 37-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra won the required majority of votes in the House of Representatives to become the country's next prime minister.

Her Pheu Thai party came only in second in 2023's election but cobbled together a ruling coalition after the vote-winner was blocked by military-backed lawmakers.

Now, the daughter of the country's most divisive but enduring politician, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, will take the office her father and aunt once occupied, underlining her family's central place in Thai politics.

On Friday, some 48 hours after Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was dismissed by a court order, Paetongtarn secured the parliamentary support required to replace him.

With that win, Paetongtarn will become the youngest Thai prime minister and only the second woman to occupy the position, after her aunt Yingluck.

She will also seek to beat another recurring theme for the Shinawatra family- the governments led by her father and aunt were toppled by the military in 2006 and 2014, respectively.

"The country has to move ahead," Paetongtarn, the youngest of Thaksin's three children, told reporters after winning Pheu Thai's nomination on Thursday.

"We are determined, together and we will push the country forward."

Thaksin himself returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in self-imposed exile, just as Pheu Thai - the latest political vehicle of the former telecom tycoon - forged an alliance with military-backed parties to form a government.

It was an unlikely coming together of the populist Pheu Thai and the conservative-royalist establishment that have battled for supremacy in the country of 66 million people for over two decades, sometimes leading to coups and bouts of civil unrest.

Srettha was the fourth premier of a Thaksin-backed political party to be removed by a court ruling, a sign of the deep divide that still persists.

"She will be under scrutiny. She will be under a lot of pressure," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

"She will have to rely on her father,"  Pongsudhirak added. 

Paetongtarn has never held an elected government position and has no administrative experience.