By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PRIME MINISTER PAETONGTARN Shinawatra is currently viewed as susceptible to the latest impeachment-seeking lawsuit filed against her on charges of failing to abide by the wide-ranging code of political ethics by naming an allegedly dishonest person for minister, according to partisan sources.
Among several lawsuits lodged against Paetongtarn, daughter of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, the specific case has been lodged by Ruangkrai Leekitwatana to the Constitutional Court via the Election Commission calling on the judicial branch to judge whether the woman prime minister may have evidently perpetrated dishonesty and lack of ethics when she named a certain Pheu Thai member for minister.
That referred to the contentious naming of Surapong Piyachote for deputy transport minister in the Paetongtarn I cabinet. Surapong has been earlier accused of involvement in a court-indicted, vote-buying activity done by one of his canvassers during his contesting for head of the Kanchanaburi provincial administration four years ago.
The specific case against Paetongtarn is being deemed by some among the Pheu Thai rank and file as considerably vulnerable to the de facto party boss’s daughter to the extent that she could possibly be finally judged by court as guilty and subject to the legal impeachment which could possibly depose her of power as had been the case of her predecessor Srettha Thavisin who had immediately lost his prime-ministerial status under a similar lawsuit, the partisan sources said.
Though Surapong has earlier assumed the same ministerial seat during the time of the former prime minister, the Constitutional Court’s retroactive ruling on the former prime minister’s evident dishonesty and lack of ethics pertaining to the contentious naming of Pichit Chuenban, a former lawyer-turned-convict, could probably be cited as a precedent to the current case against Paetongtarn.
Other lawsuits filed against the country’s youngest prime minister refer to allegations that her father/ billionaire power player Thaksin had unlawfully dominated and masterminded political affairs of the Pheu Thai, core of the current coalition government, as well as other coalition partners.
For instance, Thaksin had allegedly manipulated all coalition partners to endorse his daughter for prime minister during a hush-hush meeting at his Chan Song Lah residence hours after Srettha had been stripped of elected premiership by the Constitutional Court last month.
Given his permanent record as a former convict, the de facto Pheu Thai boss is prohibited by law from being registered as a partisan member or tampering with any party, including his own in a purely legal sense.
But Thaksin had been invariably accused of playing a pivotal part in the power play since he returned from self-exile abroad last year and was granted the highly-contentious privileges at Police Hospital where he had stayed for a six-month period in lieu of Bangkok Remand prison to otherwise serve his curtailed, one-year jail sentence until he was released on parole earlier this year.
The de facto Pheu Thai boss had allegedly orchestrated the dumping of the Move Forward from the Pheu Thai-led coalition, the setup of the Pheu Thai-led government, the naming of Srettha for prime minister at the urging of his sister/fugitive former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the allocation of cabinet portfolios among coalition partners.
CAPTIONS:
Top: Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra at Government House today, Sep. 17, 2024.
Front Page: Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai talking to the press. Both photos: Thai Rath
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