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By Lilith Foster-Collins
News Reporter
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Thailand's Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on Wednesday over an alleged ethics violation amid a growing political crisis in the country.
The court's decision was in response to Srettha's appointment of Pichit Chuenban as a minister. Pichit previously served time in prison for attempting to bribe a court official.
This ruling follows the dissolution of the Move Forward Party, a key opposition group, just one week ago.
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Despite having completed his sentence, the court found Pichit's past conduct to be ethically problematic.
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Srettha as prime minister has sole responsibility for vetting the qualifications of his Cabinet nominations, the court ruled.
It said he knew about Pichit's past but still nominated him, and therefore he violated the ethics codes.
In a close 5-4 vote, the court removed Srettha from office with immediate effect.
The current Cabinet will continue to function in a caretaker capacity until Parliament selects a new prime minister, with no set deadline for this process.
Democracy has seen frequent ups and downs in Thailand, which was ruled until 2023 by a general who took power in a 2014 coup before turning himself into a civilian prime minister.
Srettha's tenure began in August last year following the 2023 Thai elections.
The Move Forward party secured the most votes in the general election, but the military-installed Senate refused to approve the party's prime ministerial candidate.
Srettha's Pheu Thai party came in second place in the general election but managed to form a government by aligning with parties linked to the former military administration.
The petition against Srettha can be seen as a move favoring a pro-military political party in his coalition government, and was initiated by former members of the same Senate who had refused to approve Move Forward's prime ministerial candidate.
Thailand's courts, especially the Constitutional Court, are considered a bulwark of the country's royalist establishment, which has used them and nominally independent state agencies such as the Election Commission to issue rulings to cripple or sink political opponents.
Thailand's monarch is King Vajiralongkorn, 72, who has been calculated by numerous wealth rankings to be the world's richest monarch, with a fortune estimated to range upward of $30 billion.
Last week, the Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party, based on accusations that the party violated the constitution by proposing an amendment to a law against defaming the country's royal family.
The party has since regrouped as the People's Party.
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