Thousands of rally to call Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra to resign

Thousands of protesters gathered in the Thai capital Bangkok, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra after a phone call he had with former Camboge leader Hun Saint.

In the call, she addressed Hun Saint as a “uncle” and said that a Thai military commander who was dealing with a recent border dispute “just wanted to look cool and say things that are not useful.”

The call caused public anger and led to a key partner in its ruling coalition to refuse. Paetongtarn apologized, but defended the call as “negotiation technique”.

Before he went to visit North Thailand, Paetongtarn told reporters that it was “the right to protest people to protest as long as it is peaceful.”

The Saturday rally was the biggest of its kind, as the ruling PHEU Thai party came to power in 2023.

Thousands caught the monsoon rain and blocked the roads of the Military Monument Memorial of Victory in Bangkok, waving Thai flags and holding signs that read slogans like: “PM is the enemy of the state.”

Protest leader PNTP Pourpongpan said the Prime Minister “must give way to because it is the problem.”

The 70 -year -old Serie Sangmue is traveling overnight by bus from the north to join the protest.

He told AFP that he was there “to protect Thailand’s sovereignty and to say that the prime minister is unfit.”

“I have experienced a lot of political crises and I know where this is going,” he added.

Paetongtarn said he would no longer have future calls with former Cambodia leader, but Panttep told Reuters that many Thai people thought she and her influential father were manipulated by Hong Saint.

The 38 -year -old Paetongtarn is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposited former prime minister who returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in exile. She has been in service for only 10 months and is the second female Prime Minister of the country, the first being her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra.

Protesters call for the end of Shinawatra management.

The rally was organized by the united power of the Earth, a coalition to a large extent nationalist activists who have protested against other governments led by Shinawatar for more than two decades.

In a statement read to the crowds, the group stated that the executive and parliament did not work “in the interest of democracy and the constitutional monarchy.”

In addition to flags and signs, people wore umbrellas to protect themselves from the rain. When it stops, a rainbow is formed over the victory monument.

On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court will decide whether to take a petition from the senators seeking the removal of Paetongtarn to suspected non -professionalism because of the call of Hun Sen.

Hong Saint said he shared the audio video with 80 politicians and one of them expired. He later shared the entire 17-minute record on his Facebook page.

The call was linked to a recent dispute between Cambodia and Thailand, in which tensions increased in May after the Cambodian soldier was killed in a borderline collision, rotating with their lowest decade in a decade.

But the dispute between the two nations dates back to more than a century, when the borders were drawn after the French occupation of Cambodia.

Both have imposed borderline restrictions on each other, while Cambodia banned Thai imports from electricity and internet, as well as Thai television and cinema dramas.

Despite the tensions between their countries, Shinawaras’s friendship with Hun’s family has returned decades, and Hong Saint’s father and Paathongarn are considered to be “worship”.