Thai party drops princess’s bid to become PM after royal row

▶ Extraordinary rebuke by Princess Ubolratana’s brother ends royal’s chances in March elections

A Thai party will prevent a princess from running for prime minister in March, it said yesterday, making a U-turn on its earlier decision to nominate her for the job.

The Thai Raksa Chart party said that it was ready to do its duty over the “tradition and royal customs” under Thailand’s monarchy.

This announcement effectively ends Princess Ubolratana’s unprecedented bid to become prime minister and comes after an extraordinary rebuke of her candidacy by her younger brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

Thai Raksa Chart unveiled the princess as their candidate on Friday morning in a move intended to rattle the status quo and threaten the ambitions of the junta that has ruled Thailand since it toppled former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014.

But the Thai monarch torpedoed the princess’s bid in a sharply worded statement later the same day.

He said bringing senior royals into politics was against tradition and “highly inappropriate”. The king’s word is considered final.

The Thai king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on those political party members who brought her on board. Thai Raksa Chart is aligned with Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother Thaksin, who was ousted by the military in 2006.

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for office since 1932.

The princess did not address the royal rebuke yesterday morning, when she thanked supporters on her widely followed Instagram account.

She 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.

The princess was required to give up the titles Her Royal Highness and Chao Fa (Lady of the Sky). They had been bestowed on her birth in 1951 in Switzerland, where her father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was attending university.

After her marriage and 1973 graduation from MIT, she moved with her family to California and used the name Julie Jensen, earning a master’s degree in public health at UCLA.

Junta chief Prayut Chan-OCha, the leader of the coup that toppled Yingluck Shinawatra, also said he would run for the top post in March.

Princess Ubolratana’s move briefly threw his fortunes into disarray but the palace action made it clear it does not endorse her run.