By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DEPUTY PALANG PRACHARATH leader Chaiwut Tanakhamanusorn today (Aug. 28) lambasted the Pheu Thai, core of the current coalition, for kicking out the previously third largest coalition partner from the Pheu Thai-led government in the latest power play featuring a “double-crossing” act.
The former digital economy & society minister said he viewed the latest event in which Palang Pracharath was dumped out of the Pheu Thai-led coalition government and replaced with the Democrats as a “double-crossing” act on the part of the core coalition party.
“(The Pheu Thai) should have told us earlier that they would no longer keep us in coalition. We had acted in honesty and cast yea votes for the Pheu Thai leader (Paetongtarn Shinawatra) for prime minister and they finally dumped us.
“Such a political shenanigan was grossly tantamount to a double-crossing act against the party which had unilaterally kept their promises,” the deputy Palang Pracharath leader said.
Chaiwut referred to 39 out of a total 40 Palang Pracharath MPs who had cast votes of support for Paetongtarn, daughter of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, for prime minister in a special House session earlier this month.
The deputy Palang Pracharath leader charged the Pheu Thai with failing to live up to fair play by bringing the Democrats into the current coalition whilst dumping the Palang Pracharath despite the fact that all 25 Democrat MPs abstained from voting Paetongtarn for prime minister whilst those Palang Pracharath MPs did vote for her.
The billionaire power player Thaksin had apparently locked horns with Palang Pracharath leader Prawit Wongsuwan whom he had suspected of having stood behind an impeachment lawsuit against former Pheu Thai-attached prime minister Srettha Thavisin who was finally deprived of power by the Constitutional Court.
That Prawit, currently a Palang Pracharath MP, had been absent in voting for Paetongtarn was repeatedly cited by the Pheu Thai rank and file as a lame excuse to kick out the previously third largest party, Chaiwut commented.
Nevertheless, Chaiwut categorically dismissed speculation that Prawit would manage to oust a clique of renegade Palang Pracharath MPs headed by the party’s secretary-general Thammanat Prompao who are all joining the Pheu Thai-led government, leaving their current camp in the opposition bloc.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: Deputy Palang Pracharath leader Chaiwut Tanakhamanusorn.
First insert: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra.
Second insert: Palang Pracharath leader Prawit Wongsuwan. All photos: Thai Rath
Also read: Palang Pracharath kicked out of Pheu Thai-led coalition, renegade MPs kept intact
Chuan threatened ouster as Democrat MP
Thaksin calls Pheu Thai-dissolution-seeking lawsuit ‘baloney’
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Foreign couple die in fall from Bangna condo
