
A leaked recording of a phone call between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen is putting Paetongtarn under intense pressure. During the conversation, she criticised Boonsin Padklang, a regional military commander: “As for the opposition to the Thai government, such as the 2nd Army Region commander, he could say anything that doesn’t benefit the country — anything just to make himself look cool”.
There is an active border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, and Boonsin commands troops in Thailand’s northeastern region, which includes the Thai–Cambodia border. In the phone call, Paetongtarn appears to side with Cambodia against her own military, and seems to accept Cambodia’s conditions to resolve the dispute. This doesn’t bode well for Pheu Thai, considering the military’s history of political interventions and the prominent nationalist sentiment in Thailand — a new alliance of pro-military protesters, รวมพลังแผ่นดิน (‘unite the land’), have called for a rally on 28th June at Victory Monument.
The call took place on 15th June. A nine-minute extract was leaked online yesterday, and the Cambodian government then released the complete seventeen-minute recording. Anutin Charnvirakul has used the controversy as a pretext to withdraw his Bhumjaithai party from the coalition government. (Bhumjaithai joined the coalition in 2023. There had already been credible rumours that Anutin would quit, as he was likely to be replaced as Minister of the Interior in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle.)
A previous government, also backed by Paetongtarn’s father Thaksin, faced similar accusations of disloyalty in 2008 over another territorial dispute with Cambodia. At that time, People Power Party foreign minister Noppadon Pattama endorsed Cambodia’s ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple, and was forced to resign after the Constitutional Court ruled that he had acted unanimously.
There is an active border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, and Boonsin commands troops in Thailand’s northeastern region, which includes the Thai–Cambodia border. In the phone call, Paetongtarn appears to side with Cambodia against her own military, and seems to accept Cambodia’s conditions to resolve the dispute. This doesn’t bode well for Pheu Thai, considering the military’s history of political interventions and the prominent nationalist sentiment in Thailand — a new alliance of pro-military protesters, รวมพลังแผ่นดิน (‘unite the land’), have called for a rally on 28th June at Victory Monument.
The call took place on 15th June. A nine-minute extract was leaked online yesterday, and the Cambodian government then released the complete seventeen-minute recording. Anutin Charnvirakul has used the controversy as a pretext to withdraw his Bhumjaithai party from the coalition government. (Bhumjaithai joined the coalition in 2023. There had already been credible rumours that Anutin would quit, as he was likely to be replaced as Minister of the Interior in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle.)
A previous government, also backed by Paetongtarn’s father Thaksin, faced similar accusations of disloyalty in 2008 over another territorial dispute with Cambodia. At that time, People Power Party foreign minister Noppadon Pattama endorsed Cambodia’s ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple, and was forced to resign after the Constitutional Court ruled that he had acted unanimously.

Rewind: A Brief History of Leaked Tapes
In 2013, Thaksin himself was caught out by a leaked recording of his private conversation with Yuthasak Sasiprapha, who was deputy defence minister at the time. (It became known as the ‘cordyceps tape’, as the two men discussed the health benefits of eating this fungus.) Neither Thaksin nor Yuthasak has confirmed that the recording is genuine, though it’s widely believed to be authentic. It was broadcast by ASTV, and a transcript appears in Rawee’s book Old Soldiers Never Die, Old Royalists Die (โอลด์รอยัลลิสต์ดาย).
Last year, in leaked audio of a conversation between Palang Pracharath Party leader Prawit Wongsuwon and an unidentified man, Prawit could be heard complaining that he had not yet become prime minister: “I want the people to give me a chance to be the number one.” Former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva was the victim of a fake audio clip in 2009: in the recording, he appeared to call for the suppression of red-shirt demonstrators “using all forms of violence”, though the tape was later revealed to be a hoax.
In the US and UK, there have been some notorious leaked recordings of private conversations. The most consequential of all was the ‘smoking gun’ tape that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. British tabloids reported on the so-called ‘Camillagate’, ‘Dianagate’, ‘bastardgate’, and ‘Majorgate’ tapes in the early 1990s and, a few years later, Linda Tripp’s surreptitious tapes of her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky were used as evidence of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton.
Two of the biggest scandals of US President Donald Trump’s first term were related to leaked conversations. American presidential elections are often preceded by an ‘October surprise’ — a last-minute revelation — and one of 2016’s October surprises was the infamous recording of Trump boasting to TV anchor Billy Bush about groping women: “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Trump was impeached in 2020 after a transcript of his phone call to President Zelensky of Ukraine showed that he had tried to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid (“I would like you to do us a favour, though”).
Last year, in leaked audio of a conversation between Palang Pracharath Party leader Prawit Wongsuwon and an unidentified man, Prawit could be heard complaining that he had not yet become prime minister: “I want the people to give me a chance to be the number one.” Former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva was the victim of a fake audio clip in 2009: in the recording, he appeared to call for the suppression of red-shirt demonstrators “using all forms of violence”, though the tape was later revealed to be a hoax.
In the US and UK, there have been some notorious leaked recordings of private conversations. The most consequential of all was the ‘smoking gun’ tape that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. British tabloids reported on the so-called ‘Camillagate’, ‘Dianagate’, ‘bastardgate’, and ‘Majorgate’ tapes in the early 1990s and, a few years later, Linda Tripp’s surreptitious tapes of her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky were used as evidence of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton.
Two of the biggest scandals of US President Donald Trump’s first term were related to leaked conversations. American presidential elections are often preceded by an ‘October surprise’ — a last-minute revelation — and one of 2016’s October surprises was the infamous recording of Trump boasting to TV anchor Billy Bush about groping women: “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Trump was impeached in 2020 after a transcript of his phone call to President Zelensky of Ukraine showed that he had tried to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid (“I would like you to do us a favour, though”).