Thailand’s top constitutional court on Friday dropped the hammer on 39 year-old nepo hire Prime Minister Ivanka Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was suspended from office early last month following the leak of a phone call with Cambodian elder statesman Hun Sen over a skirmish between the countries’ militaries – one that escalated into almost all-out war leaving dozens dead during her suspension – removing her from office and setting off a possible constitutional crisis, AFP reports.
Paetongtarn successfully talked the former Cambodian head of state Sen – who still maintains a considerable amount of power – into ordering his military to ease up even after one of their soldiers was killed in a skirmish with Thai troops. Paetongtarn called Sen “uncle” out of respect given her family’s previous history with him and badmouthed some of the extremists in her own military, something seen by her conservative opponents as “breaching ethical standards.” Yet even the fact that the cross-border violence got considerably worse while Acting Prime Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit was in charge apparently did not vindicate Paetongtarn and the court nixed her.
The now-former Prime Minister is the fifth out of six from a party founded by her father, former PM Thaskin Shinawatra, to have been removed over the last two decades. One of them, Samak Sundaravej, was canned by the court in 2008 for hosting a TV cooking show. Only Thaskin, 76, himself has dodged that ignominy and – just last week – 15 years in the joint on royal insult charges.