The Thai Constitutional Court yesterday accepted a petition by a group of senators seeking to remove Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on ethical grounds, but allowed him to perform his duties until it ruled on the case.
The court is to scrutinize the plea by 40 Thai senators that Srettha’s decision to appoint Pichit Chuenban as a Cabinet minister last month had constituted a serious violation of ethical standards under the constitution, the court said in a statement.
The court voted six to three to accept the petition for consideration whether Srettha should be removed from duties, while voting five to four against suspending his duties in the meantime. It gave Srettha 15 days to submit his defense from when he is formally notified of the court decision.
Photo: Blooming
A former lawyer for the influential Shinawatra family, Pichit was appointed as a minister attached to the prime minister’s office in a reshuffle last month, but lacked the qualifications required to take up such a post, the group of senators said.
Pichit on Tuesday resigned as minister, saying he wanted to save Srettha from any legal troubles.
The resignation acquitted him of further scrutiny in the case, the court said.
Pichit was sentenced to six months in jail in 2008 for contempt of court after he attempted to bribe Thai Supreme Court officials while representing former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra during a corruption trial.
The move poses a fresh challenge for Srettha’s coalition government that was cobbled together with a group of pro-royalist parties after the military-appointed Thai Senate thwarted the winner of last year’s general election from taking power. The prime minister has struggled to pull Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy from a decade of sub-2 percent annual growth rates.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done