PUBLISHED: 11 Apr 2024 at 05: 43
The Ombudsman has been asked to submit a petition to the Constitutional Court to determine whether the Thai-Cambodgee memorandum of understanding ( MoU) for joint development in the Gulf of Thailand is constitutionally invalid.
Paiboon Nititawan, the deputy leader of the Palang Pracharath Party ( PPRP ), requested the request on Wednesday from the Office of the Ombudsman.
The 2001 MoU , had not been approved by the Thai congress before it was signed, which has resulted in it “having no legal effect from inception”, according to Mr Paiboon’s plea to the Ombudsman.
He identified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Treaties and Legal Affairs as the first and second events to be held accountable for what he thought was a constitutional violation.
The two functions continue to use the MoU as a guide to what both countries have agreed regarding the 26, 000km2 of regional lakes in the Gulf of Thailand, which Thailand has independence over, despite earlier acknowledging that the MoU had never won parliamentary approval.
The MoU from 2001 is being referenced whenever the two nations attempt to come to terms with the possibility of sharing the natural assets that are thought to be worth more than 20 trillion ringgit, he said.
Mr. Paiboon stated that he requested that the court order the office and the government to stop using the 2001 MoU in their work relating to the delimitation of the regional lakes in question when he petitioned the court for a decision.
Thailand will benefit from having a better place when new disputes over Thai-Cambodge overlapping claims arise if the court determines that the 2001 MoU is illegal and has no legal influence on the grounds that it was inadequate right away, as stated in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
He claimed that Cambodia has often cited the MoU from 2001 to support its claim that Thailand had formally recognized these regional waters as both countries ‘ territories where they share overlapping claims.
If the Cambodian government ca n’t agree that the 2001 MoU is invalid, Mr. Paiboon also urged the Thai government to contact the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany.