This Woman Is Thailand's First Transgender Prime Minister Candidate

It’s safe to say that Thailand’s 2019 general election has been one of the most eventful elections in the region. This year’s election—the first after the military coup in 2014—has led to several firsts.

Last month the Kingdom was surprised by Thai Raksa Chart Party’s decision to nominate Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya as the party’s Prime Minister candidate, the first royal ever to run for the post. Her nomination was canceled and the party that nominated her has now been dissolved by the elections committee.

While the princess was the first royal to be nominated to this position, Pauline Ngarmpring is the country’s first transgender prime minister candidate. Ngarmpring joined the Mahachon Party in November 2018 and is one of the three the party selected as candidates.

Prior to her gender confirmation surgery in the United States, Ngampring was known as a prominent reporter and businessperson in the Thai sports scene. After her transition, she became an ambassador for the country's LGBTQ community, fighting for equal rights of the community that’s still marginalized in the country.

Watch: Driving Ferraris with the Thai Royalists

“I was fortunate because I had already had a long and successful career as a man before I transitioned," she told Reuters. "Otherwise, transgender people do not have many job opportunities, and are forced to work in the entertainment or hospitality industry."

Thailand may seem like a safe place for the LGBTQ community, especially compared to other countries in the region. The country is at the forefront of the growing practice of gender surgery. It decriminalized homosexuality in 1956. On the surface, the LGBTQ community seems to be a visible and welcome member of society. But the transgender community still struggle with discrimination and stigma, especially in the workforce, and overall they lack legal protection.

It wasn’t until 2015 when the Thai government—under military rule—introduced the Gender Equality Act to protect the LGBTQ community and punish discrimination based on gender expression and sexual orientation. But in reality, until now the country does not legally recognize gender changes, same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex parents or commercial surrogacy.

An activist told Reuters that Thailand’s LGBTQ community hopes that Ngarmpring will help focus attention on their plight.

Although Ngarmpring acknowledges that chances of her leading the country are slim, she continues to campaign tirelessly to promote equal rights. “We are not saying we are better than male or female. We just want to say we are equal,” she told Associated Press.

While Thailand has had a woman prime minister before, Yingluck Shinawarta—who has fled the country in a self-imposed exile to avoid prison sentence—the presence of women in Thai politics remains low. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the country has the lowest representation of women in politics in the whole ASEAN region, with only five percent of the Thai parliament—13 seats out of 500—belonging to women. There are only seven women, including Ngarmpring, currently running for the prime minister role this year.

In an interview with Khaosod English, Democrat Party spokesperson and MP candidate, Siripa Intavichein, says that women’s role in politics is often reduced to mere subordinates or "pretty faces" by the media. While she believes that representatives should be elected "based on their abilities, not gender," she also believes that a quota-based system would be necessary to increase women’s inclusion in politics.

With less than three weeks into the general elections, we can only hope that whoever is in power will address the inequality that exists in the country.