Pita gets warm welcome at ‘Little Thailand’ community in New York

He thanked Thai expatriates in New York for the high number of absentee voters registered for the May 14 general election. The number of those who had registered to cast their ballots at the Thai consulate-general in New York was the 10th highest among overseas Thai voters.

“You helped make history. The previous election saw a record voter turnout,” said the politician.

Pita said he discovered that Thai expats whom he had met in the United States were as politically aware as their compatriots living in Thailand.

He said some Thai students he ran into at the Central Park in New York even asked him about a draft law on constitutional referendum proposed by Move Forward, which was voted down by the majority of the House of Representatives just hours earlier.

Pita – who is now chief adviser to the new party leader, Chaithawat Tulathon – was speaking while having lunch with a group of Thai expats at a Thai restaurant in the Queens neighbourhood.

The Spicy Shallot Restaurant is located on a Queens thoroughfare officially named “Little Thailand Way” to honour the Thai community in New York City.

Pita, 43, was in New York to attend a gala hosted by “Time” news magazine in honour of people featured in this year’s “Time 100 Next”. The Thai politician is one of the rising leaders recognised by the US-based media outlet.

He told Thai expats that after meeting many compatriots in the US working in such areas as fashion, food, and arts, he realised that they had the potential to earn the same honour like him.

Pita promised that he would make Thailand “more livable” to become attractive enough for those capable people to “return home”.

He said that the environment in Thailand should be improved to a level that Thais living overseas want to return home. “When they return to live in Thailand, they should feel that the country’s environment is as good as in New York.”

After lunch, Pita had a group photo session with Thai expats near the road sign “Little Thailand Way”.

He and his supporters later walked to a nearby Thai Buddhist temple, where he met a large group of compatriots, some of whom came from other states just to meet Pita.

Yanisa Pongkhana, a Thai restaurateur from Virginia, said she and her family had closed their shop for the day and drove five hours to offer Pita moral support.

“I want Pita and Move Forward to distribute power to rural areas so that they are as developed as Bangkok,” she said.
 

Pita was scheduled to give a lecture in English on “Moving Forward: Thailand, Asean & Beyond” on Thursday (Oct 26) at Harvard University.

On Saturday (Oct 28), he is scheduled to join an event titled “Fireside Chat with Pita Limjaroenrat” at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. He is an MIT alumnus.

In its "Time 100 Next" issue, the magazine said: “The only thing more stunning than Pita Limjaroenrat’s election victory was the radical agenda he ran on to achieve it.”

The article said his Move Forward Party secured 38% of votes in the election by “promising to bridle the nation’s armed forces and revered royal palace, scrap its controversial royal-defamation law, and end military conscription.”

Pita, Move Forward’s only prime ministerial candidate, failed to secure majority support in Parliament to become prime minister. He stepped down from the party’s helm to pave the way for its secretary-general Chaithawat to become the opposition leader, as Pita has been suspended from MP duty due to a legal case involving his ownership of shares in a media company.