Thai Soup

It is claimed by many that dynastic politics is a bane for democracy in many countries, including India, as the interests of a family become far more important for the rulers than those of the people at large and their country.

- 

If judicial overreach is added to such politics, the result becomes an unmitigated disaster. Like in India, this is what has also happened in Thailand where the country’s Constitutional Court recently removed yet another Prime Minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, a scion of the Shinawatra family, from office. The reason for what can be called a judicial coup is a leaked phone call she had in June with the veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen. In it Paetongtarn could be heard being conciliatory towards Hun Sen over their countries’ border dispute and disparaging one of her own army commanders, who, she said, stood in the way of improvement of relationship between the two countries. 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 proved her undoing as it sparked calls for her to resign. It also saw her biggest coalition partner walk 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 which suggested she would suffer the same fate as her four predecessors.