Thailand's political parties name prime minister candidates for February election

BANGKOK (AP) — Political parties in Thailand on Sunday registered their candidates for the next prime minister, marking the unofficial start of campaigning for the Feb. 8 general election.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul dissolved Parliament earlier this month to call early polls, after the main opposition party prepared to seek a no-confidence vote over constitutional change. Calling a new election allows Anutin and his Bhumjaithai Party to build up their numbers in the House of Representatives to gain a more secure grip on government.

Voters will simultaneously cast ballots in a referendum asking whether they want a new constitution, a move promoted by progressive parties who claim the current powers held by the bureaucracy and unelected bodies are undemocratic.

The election is seen as primarily pitting Anutin’s conservative party against the progressive People’s Party, which under a different name and leadership won the highest number of House seats in the 2023 election. It ended up being blocked by conservative lawmakers from gathering enough support to form a government.

The populist Pheu Thai Party, backed by billionaire former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, is another major contender. It took power after the 2023 election, when the People’s Party’s effort was stymied. Thaksin remains the dominant figure behind Pheu Thai even though he is serving a prison term for convictions related to corruption and abuse of power.

Anutin has held office for only three months after the court-ordered removal of his predecessor, Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, for what were judged ethical lapses.

Anutin’s government saw a slip in popularity following deadly flooding in southern Thailand and high-profile scandals that ensnared several officials and business figures. However, he may have boosted his appeal by adopting an aggressive military posture appealing to nationalists as Thailand engaged in large-scale combat with Cambodia over a long-standing border dispute.

The Election Commission says 68 people from 32 parties registered as prime minister candidates, while 1,502 people from 52 parties are running as “party list” nominees, who gain seats according to each party’s proportional share of the vote. Another 3,092 candidates are running for direct election by constituency.

Each party is allowed to propose up to three candidates. The Bhumjaithai party selected just two, with veteran diplomat Sihasak Phuangketkeow, who currently serves as foreign minister, being the backup to Anutin. Their main challenger is the People’s Party.

Anutin won the September vote to become prime minister with support from the People’s Party in exchange for a promise to dissolve Parliament within four months and organize a referendum on the drafting of a new constitution by an elected constituent assembly. However, the People’s Party at the same time insisted on acting as an opposition party.

Its position now is that Anutin and his party showed bad faith in a vote on constitutional change, and dissolving Parliament constituted a final break of their temporary partnership.

People's Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, its primary candidate for prime minister, vowed that none of its lawmakers will support Anutin or Sihasak for prime minister.

The People’s Party continues to push a reformist agenda, including a controversial pledge to seek amnesty for political prisoners, specifically those held under Thailand’s strict law curbing criticism of the monarchy. Its position puts it sharply at odds with Thailand’s powerful royalist conservative establishment.

The Pheu Thai party, the current incarnation of Thaksin’s political machine, is fielding 46-year-old Yodchanan Wongsawat as its main candidate for prime minister.

Thailand's Prime Minister and leader of Bhumjaithai Party Anutin Charnvirakul leaves after a drawing at a candidate registration in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025.

Pheu Thai Party's Julapun Amornviva shows his number after a drawing at a candidate registration in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

People's Party Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut shows his number after a drawing at a candidate registration in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Supporters of Thailand's Prime Minister and leader of Bhumjaithai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, hold poster during a candidate registration in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Thailand's Prime Minister and leader of Bhumjaithai Party Anutin Charnvirakul, front right, arrives for a canddate registration in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

PARIS (AP) — Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist, has died. She was 91.

Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, told The Associated Press that she died Sunday at her home in southern France, and would not provide a cause of death. He said no arrangements have yet been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by her then-husband, Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.

At the height of a cinema career that spanned some 28 films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and even on coins.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals; she condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments; and she opposed sending monkeys into space.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”

Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest honor.

Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone and her far-right political views sounded racist as she frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.

She was convicted five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred. Notably, she criticized the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays like Eid al-Adha.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described the outspoken nationalist as a “lovely, intelligent man.”

In 2012, she caused controversy again when she wrote a letter in support of Marine Le Pen, the current leader of the party — now renamed National Rally — in her failed bid for the French presidency.

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical” and “ridiculous” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.

She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy, secretive child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.

Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.

But it was French movie producer Vadim, whom she married in 1952, who saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a bored newlywed who beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.

The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.

“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant further shocked the nation. It eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.

Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant press attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broke into her house only two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.

Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor whom she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.

“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”

In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, but the relationship again ended in divorce three years later.

Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot’s curves and legs in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.

“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.”

She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.

Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.

She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.

By the late 1990s, Bardot was making headlines that would lose her many fans. She was convicted and fined five times between 1997 and 2008 for inciting racial hatred in incidents inspired by her anger at Muslim animal slaughtering rituals.

“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward ... and despite all the promises that have been made to me by all different governments put together — my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP.

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne — the bare-breasted statue representing the French Republic — after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.

Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.

“I can understand hunted animals because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”

Ganley contributed to this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot steps into a milk bath while filming the comedy "Nero's Big Weekend," in Rome March 27, 1956. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - French Actress Brigitte Bardot with a dog in the Gennevilliers, Paris, while supporting the French animal protection society operation, Feb. 10, 1982. (AP Photo/Duclos, File)

FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot poses in character from the motion picture "Voulez-Vous Danser Avec Moi" (Do you Want to Dance With Me), on Sept. 10, 1959. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - French film legend and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot looks on prior to a march of various animal rights associations on March 24, 2007 in Paris. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon, file)

FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot poses with a huge sombrero she brought back from Mexico, as she arrives at Orly Airport in Paris, France, on May 27, 1965. (AP Photo/File)