7 days ago
Thai-Cambodia clashes could be death knell for Shinawatra rule
BANGKOK – Thailand and Cambodia edged closer to full-blown war today (July 24) after Cambodian forces launched artillery attacks on civilian targets in Thai territory and Thailand responded with aerial strikes on Cambodian military camps.
The armed exchanges mark a significant escalation of weeks of low-intensity border skirmishes that saw the killing of at least one Cambodian soldier in May and the wounding of five Thai soldiers, one critically, this week from freshly laid land mines in contested border areas.
The armed confrontation will test Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc cohesion while sparking speculation about great power alignment and intervention. Cambodia reportedly launched Chinese-made shells into Thai territory while Bangkok scrambled US-procured F-16 jets to retaliate.
The bigger speculation, however, will swirl around the survival of Thailand's already wobbly coalition government and potential for a new military coup now that chest-thumping and saber-rattling have graduated to artillery shelling and aerial bombardments.
Suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was relieved of her leadership duties earlier this month over a leaked call with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, in which she referred to a high-ranking Thai soldier as 'opposed' to her government while using fawning language critics say was inappropriate for a national leader.
Thailand's Constitutional Court is currently weighing the evidence and is expected to make a ruling soon on whether Paetongtarn, now serving as culture minister, should be permanently removed from office, potentially on grounds of treason. Certain analysts believe her chances of surviving the case, which was accepted for hearing in a 7-2 vote, will have diminished significantly with today's deadly flare-up in hostilities.
Acting Prime Minister and Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, a ruling Peua Thai party stalwart and long-time loyalist to party patron Thaksin Shinawatra, is now in the political hot seat. The Peua Thai-led coalition is hanging by a thread after the departure of the conservative-leaning Bhum Jai Thai party, which left last month in a huff over control of the powerful interior ministry.
Phumtham, a former anti-military student activist and the novice Paetongtarn's veteran chaperone, has until now studiously avoided overreaching into the autonomous army's affairs and has been viewed as non-threatening to the top brass, despite earlier Peua Thai rhetoric of prioritizing legal reforms to prevent future democracy-suspending coups.
In one notable instance, Peua Thai sided with the military and against the main opposition People's Party in discussions about bringing soldiers under the jurisdiction of civilian rather than military courts, a distinction that has shielded wayward officers from rights-related prosecutions in the past.
The armed clashes will heap more pressure on the United Thai Nation party, currently the second-largest in the coalition with 36 seats, given its military roots and link to past coup-maker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, though observers note it has since morphed into a front for certain big business interests, including the ambitious Gulf Energy conglomerate.
If the current coalition collapses, it would set the stage for snap elections that neither Thaksin's wounded and so far ineffectual Peua Thai nor conservative interests likely want before they're due in 2027 in light of the potential for a People's Party romp.
The progressive party won the 2023 elections, including a clean sweep of Bangkok, on a push to press for military, monarchy and monopoly business reform, but was blocked from forming a government and was later dissolved for insulting the crown. That electoral fear factor could animate wartime calls for a coup, supposedly in the name of national security.
War with Cambodia provides a pitch-perfect pretext for conservative forces who were opposed from the start to Thaksin's return from self-exile via a royal pardon and who have openly doubted his, his daughter's and his aligned Peua Thai party's supposed conversion from populist red to monarchal yellow causes.
Thaksin currently faces a lese majeste charge dating from 2015 that could land him in prison for insulting the monarchy. The long-self-exiled ex-premier also faces charges he pulled strings to avoid serving his reduced prison sentence upon returning to the kingdom in 2023, which he spent entirely in a VIP room in a police hospital before being released on parole.
Thaksin has since been widely accused of playing a de facto role in running his daughter's government, witnessed earlier this week in a meeting urging unity among coalition partners where he was the lead speaker and his daughter was reticent in the audience. Under Thai law, political parties can be dissolved if found to be under the influence of outsiders.
Until now, Thaksin and Paetongtarn seemed somehow immune to the various charges and criticisms leveled against them, with reports and whispers that Thaksin's royal pardon was part of a broad palace pact. Diplomats and analysts suspect that royal protection may have been lifted precisely because it was touted and flexed by Thaksin's camp.
Whether the rising tensions with Cambodia were somehow manufactured and triggered by Thaksin and Paetongtarn's conservative detractors in the military or elsewhere in light of their past cordial ties to Hun Sen is unknown and unprovable.
However, what is clear is that as Thailand and Cambodia lurch toward full-scale war, questions of loyalty, tact and judgment could be enough to bring them both down.
