Insufficient firmness could cost Thailand’s leader dearly after a leaked phone call has left Thai citizens peeved she was too nice to a rival nation after a border dispute.
Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, citing a phone call last month with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, according to the Associated Press.
The contents of the call spurred protests demanding that she resign.
The call concerned a May 28 border clash in which one Cambodian soldier was killed.
The New York Times said that in the recording, Paetongtarn “appeared to be deferential to Mr. Hun Sen and disparaging of her own country’s powerful military.”
The outlet reported that Paetongtarn called him “uncle,” said she would “arrange” anything he wanted, and told him to disregard “the opposite side,” meaning the Thai armed forces.
The BBC reported that during the conversation, she said the Thai commander handling the incident “just wanted to look cool and said things that are not useful.”
The British news outlet noted there was further context to the conversation.
The friendship between the families of the two leaders “goes back decades,” it reported. “Hun Sen and Paetongtarn’s father, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, consider each other ‘godbrothers.’”
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The Constitutional Court judges voted 7-2 Tuesday to immediately suspend Paetongtarn until it issues a final ruling, the AP reported. The court gave her 15 days to provide evidence that could lead to her being restored.
“I only thought about what to do to avoid troubles, what to do to avoid armed confrontation, for the soldiers not to suffer any loss. I wouldn’t be able to accept it if I said something with the other leader that could lead to negative consequences,” Paetongtarn said, according to Fox News.
Pushing leaders aside “has become a pattern in Thai politics… a part of the Thai political culture, which is not what a true political process is supposed to be,” Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University, said, according to the BBC.
“The suspension by court order shouldn’t have happened but most people could see its legitimacy because the leaked conversation really made people question if the PM was genuinely defending the interest of the country,” the lecturer said.
Paetongtarn is the third member of her family to be Thailand’s prime minister, the AP reported. A coup removed her father in 2006. In 2014, a court order followed by a coup led to the end of the rule of his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawtra.
The Constitutional Court removed Thailand’s previous prime minister.
AP noted that “Thailand’s courts, especially the Constitutional Court, are viewed as a defender of the royalist establishment, which has used them and nominally independent agencies such as the Election Commission to cripple or sink political opponents.”
This “recurring cycle of political instability” will continue as long as unelected institutions have power in the Thai government structure, Purawich Watanasukh, a political science lecturer at Thammasat University in Bangkok, said.
“Without such foundational reforms, any government, regardless of who leads it, will remain vulnerable to the same forces that have repeatedly disrupted Thailand’s democratic development,” he said.
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