BANGKOK, Aug 15 — Thailand’s Pheu Thai party has chosen 37-year-old Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of billionaire ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra, as its candidate for prime minister, it announced today, a day after a court dismissed the incumbent premier in an ethics case.

"We decide to nominate Paetongtarn Shinawatra,” party secretary general Sorawong Thienthong told a press conference in Bangkok.

Lawmakers will vote tomorrow in parliament — where Pheu Thai heads a governing coalition — on whether to approve Paetongtarn as prime minister.

The vote comes after Thailand’s Constitutional Court sacked premier Srettha Thavisin on yesterday after ruling he had breached regulations by appointing a cabinet minister with a criminal conviction.

Srettha was the third prime minister from Pheu Thai to be kicked out by the Constitutional Court and leaves office after less than a year.

Thai politics has endured two decades of chronic instability marked by coups, street protests and court orders.

Much of it has been fuelled by the long-running battle by the military and pro-royalist establishment against progressive parties linked to Thaksin. — AFP