BANGKOK (AP) — Veteran Thai politician Anutin Charnvirakul was elected prime minister on Friday after winning a parliamentary vote, according to an official tally.
The leader of the Bhumjaithai party won a total of 311 votes, far exceeding the 247 required majority from the House of Representative’s 492 active members. He and his government are expected to take office in a few days after obtaining a formal appointment from King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
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Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, left, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, left, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, center, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul arrives at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of People's Party, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut talks to reporters during a press conference at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul leaves after a press conference at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Anutin, 58, succeeds Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was dismissed by court order as prime minister last week after being found guilty of ethics violations over a politically compromising phone call with neighboring Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen.
A border dispute between the two nations erupted into a deadly five-day armed conflict in July.
Anutin, who's an elected member of the House, got up from his seat and walked around the chamber to take pictures with other lawmakers when he was a few votes short from the winning total.
Anutin told reporters as he exited Parliament to visit his father in a hospital that he would work hard to solve the country’s problems,. “I intend to work with my full capability,” he said. “I must work everyday and make the most out of it, with no day off.”
Videos published by Thai media showed Anutin laughing as he hugged his father who said he was “very happy to see this day.”
Anutin had served in Paetongtarn’s Cabinet, but he resigned his position and withdrew his party from her coalition government after news of the leaked phone call caused a public uproar.
Pheu Thai, currently leading a caretaker government, sought to dissolve Parliament on Tuesday, but its request was rejected by the king’s Privy Council. The party's nominee for prime minister, Chaikasem Nitisiri, received 152 votes.
Anutin had served in the Pheu Thai-led coalition government that took power in 2023 and before that in the military-backed elected government under former Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.
Anutin is best known for successfully lobbying for the decriminalization of cannabis, a policy that is now being more strictly regulated for medical purposes. He was also a health minister during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was accused of tardiness in obtaining adequate vaccine supplies to fight the virus.
His party has promised to dissolve Parliament within four months in exchange for support from the progressive People’s Party. That party’s leader, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, said it would remain in the opposition, leaving the new government potentially a minority one.
The People’s Party said an Anutin-led government would have to commit to organizing a referendum on the drafting of a new constitution by an elected constituent assembly. The party has long sought changes to the constitution — which was imposed during a military government — to make it more democratic.
Anutin’s victory was a win for Thailand's traditional establishment, said Kevin Hewison, a senior Thai studies scholar based in Australia. The People’s Party is the antithesis of the conservative royalist Bhumjaithai and should be worried even with such promises made as a quid-pro-quo, he said.
“Anutin and his people are untrustworthy. Trust has deserted Thai politics, so the four months to an election is likely slippery,” he said.
The People’s Party, then named the Move Forward Party, won the most seats in the 2023 election but was kept from power when military-appointed senators, who were strong supporters of Thailand’s royalist conservative establishment, voted against its candidate because they opposed its policy seeking reforms to the monarchy.
The Senate no longer holds the right to take part in the vote for prime minister.
Pheu Thai later had one of its candidates, real estate executive Srettha Thavisin, approved as prime minister to lead a coalition government. But he served just a year before the Constitutional Court dismissed him from office for ethical violations.
Srettha’s replacement Paetongtarn, the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, also lasted just a year in office. Her government was already greatly weakened when the Bhumjaithai Party abandoned her coalition in June.
The Thaksin-linked Pheu Thai party, which exited two years in power after Paetongtarn was removed, seems unlikely to do well in any new election, Hewison said.
Thaksin on Thursday left Thailand for Dubai, where he lived during his self-imposed exile starting in 2008. His travel took place days before a court ruling over a handling of his return in 2023 that could open him up to a new prison sentence. The move prompted speculation that he was fleeing again, although Thaksin said he was travelling for a medical checkup and would return to Thailand in a few days.
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Associated Press writer Grant Peck contributed to this report.
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, left, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, left, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, center, talks to lawmakers at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul arrives at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of People's Party, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut talks to reporters during a press conference at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Leader of Bhumjai Thai Party Anutin Charnvirakul leaves after a press conference at Parliament in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
HAVANA (AP) — Trumpets and drums played solemnly at Havana's airport Thursday as white-gloved Cuban soldiers marched out of a plane carrying urns with remains of the 32 Cuban officers killed during a stunning U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Nearby, thousands of Cubans lined one of Havana’s most iconic streets to await the bodies as the island remained under threat by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The soldiers' shoes clacked as they marched stiff-legged into the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces and placed the urns on a long table next to the pictures of those killed. Tens of thousands of people paid their respects, saluting the urns or holding their hand over their heart, many of them drenched from standing outside in a heavy downpour.
Thursday’s mass funeral was only one of a handful that the Cuban government has organized over the past half-century.
The soldiers were part of the security detail of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during the Jan. 3 raid on his residence to seize the former leader and bring him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.
State television also showed images of more than a dozen people it said were wounded combatants from the raid, accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez after arriving Wednesday night from Venezuela. Some were in wheelchairs.
Tensions between Cuba and the U.S. have spiked, with Trump recently demanding that the Caribbean country make a deal with him before it is “too late.” He did not explain what kind of deal.
Trump also has said that Cuba will no longer live off Venezuela's money and oil. Experts warn that the abrupt end of oil shipments could be catastrophic for Cuba, which is already struggling with serious blackouts and a crumbling power grid.
Officials unfurled a massive flag at Havana's airport as President Miguel Díaz-Canel, clad in military garb, stood silent next to former President Raúl Castro, with what appeared to be the relatives of those killed looking on nearby.
Cuban Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas called the slain soldiers “heroes” of an anti-imperialist struggle spanning both Cuba and Venezuela. In an apparent reference to the U.S., he said the “enemy” speaks of “high-precision operations, of troops, of elites, of supremacy.
“We, on the other hand, speak of faces, of families who have lost a father, a son, a husband, a brother,” Álvarez said.
The events demonstrate that “imperialism may possess more sophisticated weapons; it may have immense material wealth; it may buy the minds of the wavering; but there is one thing it will never be able to buy: the dignity of the Cuban people,” he said.
Carmen Gómez, a 58-year-old industrial designer, was among the thousands of Cubans who lined a street where motorcycles and military vehicles thundered by with the remains of those killed.
“They are people willing to defend their principles and values, and we must pay tribute to them,” Gómez said, adding that she hopes no one invades her country. “It’s because of the sense of patriotism that Cubans have, and that will always unite us.”
The 32 military personnel ranged in age from 26 to 60 and were part of protection agreements between the two countries.
Officials in Cuba have said they expect a massive demonstration Friday across from the U.S. Embassy to protest the deaths.
“People are upset and hurt ... many do believe that the dead are martyrs” of a historic struggle against the United States, analyst and former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray told The Associated Press.
In October 1976, then-President Fidel Castro led a massive demonstration to bid farewell to the 73 people killed in the bombing of a civilian flight financed by anti-revolutionary leaders in the U.S. Most of the victims were Cuban athletes.
In December 1989, officials organized a ceremony to honor the more than 2,000 Cuban combatants who died in Angola during Cuba’s participation in a war that defeated the South African army.
In October 1997, memorial services were held following the arrival of the remains of guerrilla commander Ernesto “Che” Guevara and six of his comrades, who died in 1967.
The latest mass burial is critical to honor those slain, said José Luis Piñeiro, a 60-year-old doctor who lived for four years in Venezuela.
“I don’t think Trump is crazy enough to come and enter a country like this, ours, and if he does, he’s going to have to take an aspirin or some painkiller to avoid the headache he’s going to get,” Piñeiro said. “These were 32 heroes who fought him. Can you imagine an entire nation? He’s going to lose.”
The remains arrived a day after the U.S. announced $3 million in additional aid to help the island recover from the catastrophic Hurricane Melissa. The first flight took off on Wednesday, and a second flight was scheduled for Friday. A commercial vessel also will deliver food and other supplies.
Cuba had said on Wednesday that any contributions will be channeled through the government.
But U.S. State Department foreign assistance official Jeremy Lewin said Thursday that the U.S. was working with Cuba’s Catholic Church to distribute aid, as part of Washington's efforts to give assistance directly to the Cuban people.
“There’s nothing political about cans of tuna and rice and beans and pasta,” he said Thursday, warning that the Cuban government should not intervene or divert supplies. “We will be watching, and we will hold them accountable.”
Lewin said the Cuban government has a choice to: “Step down or better provide towards people.” Lewin added that “if there was no regime,” the U.S. would provide “billions and billions of dollars” in assistance, as well as investment and development: “That’s what lies on the other side of the regime for the Cuban people.”
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said the U.S. government was “exploiting what appears to be a humanitarian gesture for opportunistic and politically manipulative purposes.”
Coto contributed from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
People line up outside the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the remains are on display of the Cuban officers who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro, as it sprinkles rain in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Military members line up outside the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro, are on display in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Military members pay their last respects to Cuban officers who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the urns containing the remains are displayed during a ceremony in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Soldiers carry urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (Adalberto Roque /Pool Photo via AP)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People line the streets of Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, to watch the motorcade carrying urns containing the remains of Cuban officers killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Workers fly the Cuban flag at half-staff at the Anti-Imperialist Tribune near the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in memory of Cubans who died two days before in Caracas, Venezuela during the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
