Former prime minister Srettha Thavisin introduced numerous foreign policy initiatives during his year in power, yet his tenure ended with few accomplishments after the Constitutional Court unseated him in the middle of August.
Srettha made 15 foreign trips during his 358-day tenure, as part of his efforts to attract foreign investment and strengthen the country’s international relations.
His frequent travels, covering 16 countries mostly in Europe and Asia, got both praise for his proactive approach and criticism over the questionable benefits to the country from these trips.
The billionaire-turned-politician once said proudly that he was able to make as many as 19 or perhaps 23 rounds of meetings in one day when he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
“If we have our own meeting rooms, next year I could possibly do 30 rounds of meetings,” he told a government-sponsored radio program in June.
During his time in office, Srettha's government signed a total of 19 agreements and pacts with foreign countries covering various sectors, including trade, investment, technology, and environmental cooperation.
His government managed to sign a free-trade agreement with Sri Lanka when he visited the South Asian nation in early February, completing Thailand’s 15th FTA.
While discussions were ongoing with other countries and regions, such as the European Union, no additional FTAs were finalized before Srettha's departure from office.
Srettha was yet to make much headway on the ambitious 1-trillion-baht land bridge project to link the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand as no foreign investor came forward with any offer when he suddenly left the office.
Poor response to Myanmar crisis
While the government under Srettha expressed its eagerness to actively participate in international efforts to ease the crisis in strife-torn Myanmar, its action plans and implementation yielded no fruit over the past year.
The government initiated a humanitarian corridor, which received endorsement from ASEAN, aimed initially at assisting 20,000 individuals in need in the crisis-affected neighboring region.
There has been no other assistance from Thailand since the first batch of 4,000 relief bags was delivered via the Mae Sot-Myawaddy route in late March.
In responding to military clashes between the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) and ethnic armed groups along the border near Mae Sot in April, Srettha ordered the establishment of an ad hoc committee chaired by then deputy prime minister and foreign minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara to oversee the situation and make policy recommendations for the government to take part in the peace efforts.
Parnpree had a chance to call only one meeting with representatives of key agencies on Myanmar policy-making including the National Security Council and the military before he bowed out as foreign minister over his apparent disappointment at losing the deputy PM’s post in the Cabinet reshuffle in late April.
Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra appeared to overshadow the government’s efforts by making an offer to a group of Myanmar dissidents in April to mediate peace between them and the State Administration Council (SAC) junta.
Parnpree’s successor, Maris Sangiampongsa, tried to play down his former boss Thaksin’s initiative.
The foreign minister told the media in June that his government definitely paid more attention to the Myanmar crisis and was focused on peace as well as forging collaborative efforts for border security.
Thailand wanted to be the key player in initiating peace talks to solve the problem, he said, but has done nothing to achieve the goal so far.
Maris has offered no direction on how to deal with the ad hoc committee previously chaired by his predecessor, according to a senior official at the Foreign Ministry.
The Srettha government suffered embarrassment when the UN Special Rapporteur’s “Banking on the Death Trade” report recently named five Thai banks for facilitating financial transactions for military supplies to the SAC junta.
Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank, TMB Thanachart Bank, and Krungthai Bank reportedly facilitated transactions worth over US$120 million for purchase of items intended for military use on behalf of the SAC last year, double the US$60 million in 2022, according to the report.
In 2023, the SAC approved the transfer of over US$100 million to its account in the SCB, an exponential increase from less than US$5 million for items related to military procurement in 2022, the report said.
The government stayed in denial mode until opposition MPs summoned relevant agencies, including the Foreign Ministry, the Bank of Thailand, the Anti-Money Laundering Commission and the Thai Bankers Association for testimonies demanding investigation on the UN allegation.
Prior to the Constitutional Court’s ruling to remove Srettha, an official at the Foreign Ministry told Thai PBS World that the ministry had called a series of meetings to explore ways to scrutinize the financial transactions for Myanmar’s arms procurement.
Unsolved maritime issue
Since the time he took office in August 2023, Srettha pushed for negotiations to solve the maritime dispute on the overlapping claims area (OCA) with Cambodia.
He raised the issue during discussions with Cambodian counterpart Hun Manet when he visited Phnom Penh for the first time in the office in late September last year and made a strong commitment to the negotiations when Hun Manet visited Bangkok in early February this year.
Thailand signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in 2001 to jointly demarcate sea territory as well as develop a production and profit-sharing scheme in the 26,000 square kilometers OCA in the Gulf of Thailand, which potentially contains up to 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas as well as 500 million barrels of condensate and oil.
The negotiations have been bogged down over the past 23 years, making little progress due to political setbacks and resistance from conservative nationalists that soured relations between the two counties.
The latest move to block the negotiations took place less than two weeks before Maris visited Cambodia in late June when Palang Pracharath Party deputy leader Paiboon Nititawan lodged a petition in the Constitutional Court seeking a ruling on whether the MOU was unconstitutional.
Article 178 of the 2017 Constitution requires a treaty signed with a foreign country or international organization that makes changes to territory and impacts economic and social security to get approval from Parliament.
Paiboon said the 2001 MOU had never been approved by Thailand's Parliament before the signing, and therefore it had no legal validity from the beginning.
He petitioned the court to nullify the MOU and asked the Foreign Ministry to take responsibility for violating the Constitution.
While Maris argued that the MOU was not a treaty as defined under international law, and it obligated no territorial changes, he took no action to continue the talks to settle the issue with Cambodia. The matter needed to be suspended pending a ruling by the court.
The Thai government, with or without Srettha, is unlikely to abandon its efforts to settle the maritime dispute and jointly develop petroleum resources in the OCA with Cambodia.
The point was made by none other than Pheu Thai patriarch Thaksin during a dinner talk on August 22.
Thaksin said the two countries badly needed to extract fossil-based energy before it becomes obsolete due to emerging alternative green energy.
"I'm studying the Norwegian model for sharing natural resource benefits with our entire population. At the same time, we aim to reduce our dependence on imported energy to lower overall energy costs," said Thaksin.
While the 2001 MOU signed during his premiership linked boundary delimitation and a joint development scheme into a single package, Thaksin emphasized that the OCA was not about territorial claims but rather focused solely on hydrocarbon resource extraction.
"The best approach," he noted, "is to follow the model we used with Malaysia, of sharing the production interests in the joint development areas equally — 50/50."
