By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PRIME MINISTER PAETONGTARN Shinawatra was today (July 1) ordered by the Constitutional Court to immediately stop running the country as head of government pending a court ruling to be delivered in about a couple of months in response to an impeachment lawsuit filed against her.
The nine judges of the Constitutional Court did not only unanimously take the case lodged by senators into account but voted 7:2 to order Paetongtarn, daughter of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, to immediately stop performing her executive duties as an elected prime minister pending the court verdict anticipated in a couple of months or sooner.
The woman prime minister who is yet staying in the Pheu Thai-led cabinet in legal capacity as culture minister despite today’s court-ordered, immediate suspension to her running the country as head of government has been charged with perpetrating disreputable, erroneous conduct whilst handling Thai-Cambodian border conflict primarily deemed detrimental to Thailand’s territorial integrity and national interests, supposedly warranting a court-ordered end to her rule.
In her informal telephone conversation with Cambodian leader Hun Sen a couple of weeks earlier, Paetongtarn spontaneously offered to do whatever he may have wanted her to do in an apparent effort to settle the border dispute and restore mutual peace along the shared border allegedly at the expense of Thailand’s national prestige and honour.
At one instant during the private chitchat, yet exposed to the public, the suspended prime minister branded a Thai army general in charge of border security “one of those on the opposite side” whilst talking on her private cell phone with whom she called “uncle” and the father of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.
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Top and Front Page: Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Photos: Thai Rath
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