On Friday, as many observers of Thailand’s politics expected, the Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office for violating her ethical duties in a leaked phone call with Cambodia’s influential former leader Hun Sen.
In its ruling, the nine-judge panel said that the 39-year-old politician had “seriously violated” the ethical standards required of a prime minister during the call, which Hun Sen subsequently leaked to the press.
In the leaked June 15 call, Paetongtarn can be heard pressing Hun Sen for a peaceful resolution to the two nations’ current border dispute and vowing to “take care of whatever” the veteran Cambodian leader needed. She also accused a prominent Thai general of being “completely aligned with the other side” (i.e., her domestic political opponents).
The court stated that Paetongtarn put her personal interests over those of the nation during the call, leading to a loss of public trust and confidence in her leadership.
With the ruling, Paetongtarn became the fifth prime minister to be stripped of office by Thai judges since 2008, in addition to her father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck, who were ousted in military coups, in 2006 and 2014, respectively. The most recent was her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin, who was removed from office for a similar alleged ethical breach.
As following Srettha’s removal, Friday’s ruling has initiated a new period of political uncertainty in Thailand, as the country’s three largest parties, none of which can form a government without the support of at least one of the others, jostle for both short- and long-term political advantage.
The two parties most eager to form the next government are Pheu Thai, which nominated Srettha and Paetongtarn, and the conservative Bhumjaithai party, a former member of the Pheu Thai coalition that withdrew from her coalition following the leak of Paetongtarn’s call with Hun Sen.
According to the Constitution, the appointment of the next prime minister requires a simple majority in the 500-seat House of Representatives, in a vote that could take place as early as September 4. Eligible candidates are limited to those nominated by the parties ahead of the 2023 general election. With two of its three candidates now having served and been dismissed from office, Pheu Thai has just one option remaining: Chaikasem Nitisiri, a 77-year-old veteran lawyer. Meanwhile, Bhumjaithai’s leader Anutin Charnvirakul has long been reported to covet the leadership.
To muster the necessary parliamentary majority, both parties are heatedly courting the progressive People’s Party, the successor of the Move Forward Party (MFP), which won the most seats of any party at the 2023 general election but was subsequently dissolved, also by the Constitutional Court, last year. While the People’s Party is ideologically anathema to both Pheu Thai and Bhumjaithai, a feeling that is very much mutual, its 143 seats in parliament make it a potential kingmaker.
This is leverage that the party’s leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut seems bent on using to the full. Immediately after Paetongtarn’s dismissal from office, the People’s Party stated that it was willing to support the selection of a caretaker prime minister who pledges to dissolve parliament within four months and organize a referendum on amending the military-drafted 2017 Constitution. In what has been described by one observer as a “political innovation,” the People’s Party says that while voting to support a prime minister to form a new minority government, it will remain outside the coalition in an arrangement known as “confidence and supply.”
Rather than seeking to form government immediately, the People’s Party is clearly seeking a return to the polls, in the hope that it will continue to attract support from a Thai electorate increasingly frustrated with the country’s seemingly perpetual political instability and infighting. The MFP won the most votes at the last election in 2023, and was only blocked from forming government due to the veto of military-appointed senators – a veto power that has since expired. The party is also likely to seek constitutional amendments that will prevent the conservative establishment from stymying a possible progressive victory.
Both Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai say they are ready to accept the People’s Party’s terms. In a statement released shortly after the Constitutional Court ruling, Bhumjaithai said that it was willing to accept the party’s conditions, and would return power to the people via snap elections in the coming months.
Pheu Thai has since also agreed to the People’s Party’s conditions, Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said after a meeting between representatives of the two parties yesterday, the Bangkok Post reported. “Today, the coalition came together to present our commitment to their conditions,” Phumtham said. He added that the party was “ready to dissolve parliament within four months, as requested – even faster if needed.”
The situation remains uncertain as of press time, with Natthaphong of the People’s Party saying that the party would meet today to consider its options. “The objective of the People’s Party is to use its 143 votes to break the political deadlock for the country without joining the government,” he told reporters. “We reject any under-the-table or backroom negotiations entirely.” According to some Thai media reports, the People’s Party may not publicly announce its decision until the parliamentary vote takes place.
By virtue of its larger representation in Parliament – 135 seats, to Bhumjaithai’s 69 – Pheu Thai may have the advantage. As Napon Jatusripitak of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute wrote in a thread on X back in July, when the People’s Party first hinted that it might support a new prime minister if the incoming government agrees to dissolve the House and amend the Constitution, Pheu Thai and the People’s Party together have enough votes to approve a new prime minister, whereas a People’s Party-Bhumjaithai alliance “falls short of a majority without hard-to-please partners.”
However, much depends on whether the People’s Party and its leaders harbor bitter feelings about how Pheu Thai acted after the 2023 election, when it abandoned the party’s predecessor, the MFP, after the military-dominated Senate blocked it from forming a government. Pheu Thai then moved to form its own coalition with conservative and military-backed parties, a political pact that allowed its patriarch, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, to return to Thailand after more than 15 years in self-exile.
While Thaksin recently met with Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, an important figure in the People’s Party, to seek his support for Pheu Thai’s prime ministerial candidate, it is possible that Pheu Thai’s betrayal will spoil the prospect of a new political agreement between the two parties. However, the most likely alternative, a confidence and supply arrangement with Bhumjaithai, is ideologically and politically even more idiosyncratic.
That such an unlikely alliance is now a possibility speaks to the fractured and unsettled state of Thai politics – an uncertainty which, due to the conservative establishment’s continued interventions, shows no sign of abating. “Whoever the next prime minister is, they will become Thailand’s third in as many years,” Thai political observer Ken Lohatepanont wrote in his newsletter after Friday’s ruling. “He will face a political landscape that is more chaotic and uncertain than any in recent memory.”