“Also you need the governor who has a vision, who has the strategy to bring the city to the future, so you need two jobs.”Ī record-high 31 candidates entered the race, but Chadchart’s performance against one candidate in particular is drawing special scrutiny.Īsawin Kwanmuang was appointed governor in 2016 by Prayuth Chan-ocha, the former general who seized power in the 2014 coup and was returned to office following the 2019 election as Thailand’s prime minister. “You need a governor for the people: people-centric, you know, respond to their day-to-day problems, improve their day-to-day problems, that’s one thing,” the 55-year-old Chadchart told The Associated Press as he campaigned recently in a market. He served as transport minister in a Pheu Thai government from 2012 to 2014. But both his supporters and opponents see him as a proxy for the main opposition party, Pheu Thai, for which he stood as a prime ministerial candidate in the 2019 general election. The frontrunner in the polls, Chadchart Sittipunt, is running as an independent. Thai politics since a 2006 coup has been generally polarized between pro- and anti-military parties, and the top candidates reflect that schism. It has been nine years since the last election, and voters’ choice last time was replaced in 2016 by an appointee of the military government then leading Thailand. The position elsewhere is appointed by the Interior Ministry. Opinion polls suggest that candidates associated with opposition parties in Parliament will dominate in the race, while the incumbent, who is seen as the ruling party’s choice, trails behind.īangkok, the country’s biggest city, is legally a province and the only one where residents can choose their own governor. BANGKOK-Residents of the Thai capital, Bangkok, will cast their ballots for the city’s leader Sunday in a vote seen as a barometer of the public mood ahead of an approaching general election.

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