Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was removed by Thailand's Constitutional Court in the year 2025 over a leaked phone call with a senior statesperson of which neighbouring country ?
- (a)Myanmar
- (b)Cambodia
- (c)Laos
- (d)Vietnam
Answer
Why
Correct — B, (b) Cambodia. The leaked telephone conversation that ended Paetongtarn Shinawatra's premiership was with Hun Sen, the former Prime Minister and President of the Senate of Cambodia. The sequence was this. A border clash between Thai and Cambodian forces in late May 2025 raised tensions along a disputed stretch of the frontier. On 15 June 2025 Paetongtarn telephoned Hun Sen to try to calm the situation. The recording of that call was leaked on 18 June. In it she addressed the veteran Cambodian leader as 'uncle' and spoke of a Thai regional army commander in terms her critics read as disloyal to her own military, and the tone of the whole conversation was widely condemned in Thailand as deferential at the expense of national dignity. The fallout was rapid. A coalition partner withdrew, protests followed, and a group of senators petitioned the Constitutional Court alleging dishonesty and a breach of ethical standards. The Court suspended her from office on 1 July 2025 while it considered the petition, and on 29 August 2025 it voted six to three to remove her, holding that she had violated the constitutional provisions on abuse of position and conduct against the national interest. Paetongtarn Shinawatra is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra and the niece of Yingluck Shinawatra, both of whom were themselves Prime Ministers of Thailand and both of whom left office through judicial or military intervention — which is what makes this episode part of a pattern rather than an isolated event. Among the four countries offered, Cambodia is the one with which Thailand had the live border dispute and the one whose senior statesperson was on the call. The other three border Thailand or lie in its neighbourhood but had no part in it, as the notes below set out.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Myanmar — Myanmar shares Thailand's long western border and generates a steady stream of Thai security concerns — the civil conflict since the coup of February 2021, refugee flows, armed groups operating near the frontier, and the scam compounds along the border towns that both countries have moved against. Any of those would make a plausible subject for a difficult phone call. But the leaked call of June 2025 was not with Myanmar, and the dispute behind it was the Thai-Cambodian border. The senior figure on the other end of the line was Hun Sen, whose position as an elder statesman with a decades-long relationship with the Shinawatra family is part of why the conversation was so damaging in Thailand.
- (c)Laos — Laos borders Thailand along much of the Mekong and the two countries maintain close and largely untroubled relations — the Friendship Bridges across the river, the Laos-China railway link that carries traffic on to Thailand, and substantial Thai investment in Lao hydropower. There was no border confrontation with Laos in 2025 and no leaked call with a Lao leader. The option belongs to the set because it is a neighbouring country and the stem asks for one; the discriminating fact is the border clash of late May 2025, which was with Cambodia, and the disputed frontier areas that clash arose from.
- (d)Vietnam — Vietnam does not share a land border with Thailand at all — Laos and Cambodia lie between them — so it cannot answer a stem asking for a NEIGHBOURING country in the sense the episode requires. Thailand and Vietnam are both members of ASEAN and have close trade relations, and they are sometimes rivals in rice exports and in regional influence, but there was no bilateral crisis of this kind in 2025. Reading the stem's word 'neighbouring' carefully narrows the field before any recollection of the event is needed, and knowing that the Thai-Cambodian frontier has been the subject of a long-running dispute, including the litigation over the Preah Vihear temple, settles the rest.
Concept
Thailand's politics have for two decades turned on the contest between the electoral coalitions built by the Shinawatra family and the conservative establishment of the military, the palace and the courts, with the Constitutional Court repeatedly the instrument through which governments have ended. Thaksin Shinawatra was removed by a coup in 2006; his sister Yingluck Shinawatra was removed by the Constitutional Court in 2014 and a coup followed weeks later; his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who became Prime Minister in August 2024, was suspended in July 2025 and removed by the Constitutional Court on 29 August 2025 over the leaked call with Hun Sen of Cambodia. The trigger lay in the Thai-Cambodian border dispute, a long-running disagreement over the demarcation of the frontier that includes the area around the Preah Vihear temple — the subject of a 1962 judgment of the International Court of Justice awarding the temple to Cambodia and of a further interpretation in 2013 — and that flared into armed clashes in 2011 and again in 2025. Hun Sen, on the other end of the call, was Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1985 to 2023, one of the longest-serving heads of government in the world, and remained influential as President of the Senate after handing the premiership to his son Hun Manet. Both countries are members of ASEAN, whose principle of non-interference limits its role in bilateral disputes of this kind.
International current affairs in these papers is asked at headline level and tests whether a candidate followed the year's major political events with enough attention to hold the countries and the names together. The option set here is a neat one — four South-East Asian countries, of which one does not even border Thailand — so a careful reading of the word 'neighbouring' narrows it before recall is engaged. The efficient way to prepare for such items is to keep a short list of the year's changes of government and the reason for each, since that is the form the question almost always takes.
Key facts
- Paetongtarn Shinawatra was removed as Prime Minister of Thailand by the Constitutional Court on 29 August 2025, by a vote of six to three.
- She had been suspended from office on 1 July 2025 after a petition by a group of senators alleging dishonesty and a breach of ethical standards.
- The petition arose from a telephone call of 15 June 2025 with Hun Sen of Cambodia, leaked on 18 June 2025.
- The call followed a border clash between Thai and Cambodian forces in late May 2025.
- Hun Sen was Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1985 to 2023 and thereafter President of the Senate; his son Hun Manet succeeded him as Prime Minister.
- Paetongtarn is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra and the niece of Yingluck Shinawatra, both former Prime Ministers of Thailand.
- Thaksin was removed by a coup in 2006 and Yingluck by the Constitutional Court in 2014.
- The Thai-Cambodian border dispute includes the area around the Preah Vihear temple, awarded to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962 with a further interpretation in 2013.
- Vietnam does not share a land border with Thailand; Laos and Cambodia lie between them.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing Myanmar because it is the neighbour most often in the news for security reasons.
- Choosing Vietnam, which does not border Thailand at all.
- Confusing Hun Sen with his son Hun Manet, the serving Prime Minister of Cambodia.
- Confusing this removal with the earlier removals of Thaksin in 2006 and Yingluck in 2014.
International items in these papers turn on people, countries and reasons. Keep a running list of the year's changes of head of government with the country and the immediate cause, and pair it with a mental map of who borders whom in the regions the papers favour — South and South-East Asia above all. Between them they answer most items of this shape.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, removed as Prime Minister of Thailand in 2025, is related to Thaksin Shinawatra as his :
- (a)Sister
- (b)Daughter
- (c)Niece
- (d)Cousin
Answer(b) Daughter
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Preah Vihear temple, at the centre of a long-running border dispute, was awarded by the International Court of Justice in 1962 to :
- (a)Thailand
- (b)Cambodia
- (c)Laos
- (d)Vietnam
Answer(b) Cambodia