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Thailand’s casino entertainment complex bill is in peril after former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen launched a destabilisation campaign against the Thai prime minister and called for her removal.
Hun Sen’s extraordinary leaking of a confidential conversation with Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and his livestream diatribe against her last week have weakened her ruling coalition, wrecked her polling numbers and potentially hobbled the government’s efforts to pass the bill.
The attack by the strongman leader, who continues to wield influence through his presidency of Cambodia’s Senate and his son’s prime ministership, also excoriated Paetongtarn’s father Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister.
But the ruling coalition’s leading Pheu Thai Party, which was founded by Thaksin, held firm on the weekend despite the withdrawal from the coalition of the influential Bhumjaithai Party over the leaked audio.
Pheu Thai Party spokesperson Danuporn Punnakanta said on Sunday (June 29) that parliamentary debate on the bill has been delayed, not shelved, and will follow a one-month “review” of more sensitive components of the document, including anti-money laundering provisions and, critically for foreign investors, access for Thai nationals to casino gambling.
However, with Paetongtarn’s polling numbers plummeting last week amid Hun Sen’s ferocity, it is unclear if the remainder of the ruling coalition will stay united and stand by gambling legislation and other high-profile policies.
The Bhumjaithai Party-dominated Senate is also likely to turn against government policy in general after a Senate committee declared last week that the Entertainment Complex casino initiative offered no economic gain for the taxpayer and could be unconstitutional on several fronts.
After months of legislative progress and industry efforts to assuage public fears on integrated resorts, deadly tension on the Thai-Cambodian border in May and subsequent border closures and internet interruptions threaten to bring the momentum for gambling reform and wider government agendas to a near halt.
Hun Sen’s tape leak and subsequent livestream attack on the Thai Prime Minister, including a litany of allegations of lèse-majesté and other alleged criminal acts by the Shinawatra family, amounted to aggressive political meddling and skulduggery, horrifying pro-casino forces as gambling reform and Thailand’s law enforcement failures on illegal gambling become fuel for bilateral sniping.
But Hun Sen’s barbs also hit home last week with political opponents of the Shinawatra family in Thailand and others angered by her seeming obeisance toward Hun Sen.
Protests against Paetongtarn and calls for her resignation are now a daily occurrence amid public fears of yet another Thai government falling into disrepair.
Cambodia under fire
The Thai government returned fire against Hun Sen on Saturday, with deputy foreign affairs minister Russ Jalichandra calling his comments on regime change a violation of international law and regional accords. He warned Cambodia to take its duty to suppress its own illegal gambling and cyber-scam compounds more seriously.
“The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Amnesty International and global media outlets, as well as major world powers, have all flagged Cambodia as a hotspot for large-scale illegal operations,” Russ said in comments quoted by daily newspaper The Nation.
“If Cambodia denies these claims, they should explain themselves directly to those organisations, not Thailand.”
Russ’ comments referred to a report by Amnesty International released on Thursday that accused Cambodia of high-level complicity in the nation’s ecosystem of largely Chinese-run online scam compounds.
The heavily guarded locations have enslaved tens of thousands of victims from around the globe and turbo-charged the development of similar operations in Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines.
“Thailand considers these scam operations and human trafficking networks in neighbouring countries a serious threat to both national security and economic stability,” government spokesperson Jirayu Huangsab said on Thursday.
In a statement accompanying the report on Thursday, Amnesty International said Cambodia is “deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale in more than 50 scamming compounds located across the country”.
“The Cambodian government could put a stop to these abuses, but it has chosen not to. The police interventions documented appear to be merely ‘for show’,” regional research director Montse Ferrer said.
Ousted Cambodian democratic figurehead Sam Rainsy on Saturday accused Hun Sen of defending Chinese criminal networks that he alleged have supported the Cambodian strongman.
In a statement posted on his X (formerly Twitter) account, Rainsy said Hun Sen's attack on the Shinawatra family is a “political smokescreen” for “preserving the corrupt financial networks that keep his regime afloat”.
“Thailand's crackdown [on border-area Chinese syndicates] represents a direct threat to his financial lifeline. In response, Hun Sen is once again using nationalist sentiment to distract the public and rally support.”
Cambodia’s gambling regulator, the Commercial Gambling Management Commission, did not respond to a Vixio GamblingCompliance request for comment at the time of publication.
Thailand’s problems with illegal gambling and human trafficking are serious and have been acknowledged by Bangkok, particularly regarding the transportation of foreign victims through Thailand into Myanmar.
Various initiatives have been put in place to hinder trafficking through border towns and obstruct online gambling operators, a response in part to the need to distance land-based casino legislation from the disreputable side of the industry.
But even before the current fallout with Cambodia, pro-reform politicians had taken a more defensive posture as public and political hostility to the bill grew and Chinese President Xi Jinping weighed in against criminal influence in the gambling industry.
The Thai government announced in early June that the investment threshold for individual casino entertainment complexes will be 100bn baht ($3.1bn), but avoided the question of investor confidence if Thais other than the super-wealthy are not permitted to gamble at the facilities.
