Thailand's Constitutional Court strikes again, removing yet another prime minister from office.
The country's notoriously interventionist panel of nine appointed judges has ruled that Paetongtarn Shinawatra violated ethical standards in a phone call she had in June with the veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen, which he then leaked.
In it, Paetongtarn could be heard being conciliatory towards Hun Sen over their countries' border dispute and criticising one of her own army commanders.
She defended her conversation saying she had been trying to make a diplomatic breakthrough with Hun Sen, an old friend of her father Thaksin Shinawatra, and said the conversation should have remained confidential.
The leak was damaging and deeply embarrassing for her and her Pheu Thai party. It sparked calls for her to resign as her biggest coalition partner walked out of the government, leaving her with a slim majority.
In July, seven out of the nine judges on the court voted to suspend Paetongtarn, a margin that suggested she would suffer the same fate as her four predecessors. So Friday's decision was not a surprise.
Paetongtarn is the fifth Thai prime minister to be removed from office by this court, all of them from administrations backed by her father. This has given rise to a widespread belief in Thailand that it nearly always rules against those seen as a threat by conservative, royalist forces.
The court has also banned 112 political parties, many of them small, but including two previous incarnations of Thaksin's Pheu Thai party, and Move Forward, the reformist movement which won the last election in 2023.
In few other countries is political life so rigorously policed by a branch of the judiciary. In this case, it was the leaked phone conversation that sealed Pateongtarn's fate.
It is not clear why Hun Sen chose to harm his friendship with the Shinawatras. He reacted angrily to a comment by Paetongtarn in which she called the Cambodian leadership's use of social media to push its arguments unprofessional. Hun Sen described it as an unprecedented insult, which drove him to expose the truth. His decision caused a political crisis in Thailand, igniting tensions over their border, which last month erupted into a five-day war that killed more than 40 people.
The Thai constitution now requires members of parliament to choose a new prime minister from a very limited list. Each party was required to name three candidates before the last election, and Pheu Thai has used up two, following the court's dismissal of Srettha Thavisin last year.
Now, their third candidate, Chaikasem Nitisiri, is a former minister and party stalwart but has little public profile and is in poor health. The alternative would be Anutin Charnvirakul, the former interior minister whose Bhumjaithai party walked out of the ruling coalition, ostensibly over the leaked phone call.
Relations between the two parties are now strained, and Anutin would have to rely on Pheu Thai, which has many more seats, to form a government, a situation unlikely to guarantee stability.
The largest party in parliament, the 143 MPs formerly in the now-dissolved Move Forward, have vowed to remain in opposition until a new election is held.
A new election appears to be the most obvious way out of the current political mess, yet Pheu Thai is reluctant for that. After two years in office, it has failed to meet promises to revive the economy.
For all of her youth, the inexperienced Paetongtarn failed to establish any real authority over the country, with most Thais presuming that her father was making all the big decisions.
However, Thaksin Shinawatra seems to have lost his magic touch. The Pheu Thai party's flagship policy of providing a digital wallet with B10,000 ($308) for each Thai adult has stalled and faced considerable criticism for its ineffectiveness.
Other ambitious proposals, such as legalising casinos and building a land bridge connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans, have also failed to materialise.
Amid rising Thai nationalist sentiments over the border conflict with Cambodia, the long-standing but now fractured friendship with Hun Sen has intensified suspicions among conservative factions that the Shinawatras prioritise their business interests over national considerations.
The party's popularity has plummeted, and it stands to likely lose many of its 140 seats in a future election.
For over two decades, it was an indomitable electoral force in Thai politics, and it is challenging to envision how it will reclaim its former dominance.
