Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra yesterday apologized for a leaked phone call with former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, which prompted the withdrawal of a major party from her coalition.
Standing in front of army and police chiefs, and wearing a dark jacket over a royal yellow blouse, the 38-year-old Thai leader performed a wai as she apologized for the incident.
“I would like to apologize for the leaked audio of my conversation with a Cambodian leader, which has caused public resentment,” Paetongtarn told reporters. “We don’t have time for infighting. We have to protect our sovereignty. The government is ready to support the military in all ways.”
The call in question related to a border dispute with Cambodia that has escalated since troops clashed along an undemarcated stretch of the border on May 28.
In the leaked June 15 call, Paetongtarn can be heard pressing Hun Sen for a peaceful resolution to the current dispute and vowing to “take care of whatever” the veteran Cambodian leader needed. Most controversially, she effectively accused Lt. Gen. Boonsin Padklang, the commander of Thailand’s Second Army Region, where last month’s clash took place, of inciting anti-government sentiment on the border issue and of being “completely aligned with the other side” (i.e., her domestic political opponents).
The leak of the call, which Hun Sen later admitted to recording and passing to around 80 other Cambodian officials, led to an immediate backlash. The leader of the opposition People’s Party called for the Thai leader to step down, while the Bhumjaithai party, the second-largest party in her coalition, withdrew its support, saying that she had insulted the country and the army. Its withdrawal threatened the survival of the coalition, which was formed in 2023 in a hatchet-burying deal between Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party and the royalist and conservative forces that have fought for years to blunt the influence of her father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Paetongtarn said yesterday that her intention in the call with Hun Sen was to stabilize the situation on the border, and that she “never expected the conversation to be leaked.”
“Moving forward, I will be more cautious with my negotiating approach,” she said.
Following her apology, Paetongtarn appears to have weathered the immediate storm. After meetings late yesterday, the Democrat party and Chart Thai Pattana party both confirmed that they would remain in the Pheu Thai-led coalition. Today, the Thai leader was scheduled to visit Ubon Ratchathani to meet with an army commander she criticized in her call with Hun Sen, which may succeed in reducing tensions with the military, at least for now.
Amid rumors of a coup, the military said in a statement yesterday that army chief Gen. Pana Claewplodtook had affirmed his “commitment to democratic principles and national sovereignty protection.”
“The Chief of Army emphasised that the paramount imperative is for ‘Thai people to stand united’ in collectively defending national sovereignty,” the army said in a statement.
The parliamentary arithmetic for Paetongtarn remains tricky. After the loss of the Bhumjaithai’s 69 lawmakers, the Pheu Thai-led government has been left with a slim majority of 254 seats in the 500-seat House of Representatives. Losing another major partner could well bring down the government, but Thai media reports suggest that she could make up the losses with “defectors” from other parties. The fact that five seats are currently vacant gives her additional room for maneuver.
However, demands for her to take political responsibility for the leaked audio recording, either by resigning or by dissolving the House of Representatives and calling a new election, are likely to persist. The ultra-royalist Student and People’s Network for Thailand Reform held a small rally outside Government House yesterday, calling on Paetongtarn to step down and for parties to withdraw from her coalition. One leading figure interviewed by the Bangkok Post criticized “the submissive stance taken by the government, which appeared more inclined to accept Cambodia’s conditions than to defend Thailand’s national interest resolutely.”
Present at the protest were veterans of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the “yellow shirt” movement that agitated against Thaksin-aligned governments in the late 2000s, and the People’s Democratic Reform Committee, whose street protests helped precipitate the crisis that preceded the military coup against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (Paetongtarn’s aunt) in 2014. Both groups are also strongly represented in a hastily-formed royalist pressure group, Ruam Palang Phaen Din, which announced today that it would hold a protest calling for the Thai PM’s resignation on June 28.
The backlash is also headed for the courts, where royalist “serial petitioners” have already filed, or announced their intention to file, complaints against Paetongtarn over the leaked conversation. A similar legal petition brought down her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin, last year for a much more minor transgression, and have prompted legal scrutiny of her father’s treatment since his return from self-exile in 2023.