Thaksin Shinawatra walked out of Klong Prem Central Prison shortly after 7:40am on Monday morning, six days after the Thai cabinet cancelled the 2001 maritime agreement with Cambodia.
He had served about eight months of a one-year sentence that the king commuted from eight years on conflicts of interest and abuse of power dating to his 2001-2006 premiership. His hair was closely cropped and his shirt plain white as supporters chanted “we love Thaksin” while he greeted his daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, whom the Constitutional Court removed as prime minister in August. The Department of Corrections required an electronic ankle monitor for the remainder of his sentence, which ends 9 September.
The release came six days after the Thai cabinet approved the cancellation of the 2001 Memorandum of Understanding with Cambodia, the framework governing overlapping maritime claims in the Gulf of Thailand. Within hours, Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn announced Cambodia would initiate compulsory conciliation under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Thailand has been a party since 2011.
The last time a Thai cabinet moved against the agreement, on 10 November 2009, the Thai Foreign Ministry’s first stated reason was the appointment of Thaksin as an economic adviser to the Royal Government of Cambodia. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said that because Thaksin had been directly involved in the original 2001 negotiations, the Thai government “cannot continue negotiations with Cambodia under the said MOU.” Thaksin resigned the Cambodian post within months. The ministry also cited the resource potential of the overlapping claims area and the absence of progress under the MOU in the prior eight years. The Abhisit cabinet agreed in principle to revoke. In November 2024, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the 2014 cabinet had reversed the decision after concluding the MOU remained “Thailand’s most effective tool” for protecting Thai interests in maritime boundary negotiations. The 2026 cabinet cited a shift to UNCLOS as the framework for future negotiations and said 25 years had produced no progress. It did not cite Thaksin’s Cambodia role.
The relationship that had been the predicate for the 2009 attempt had broken publicly from both sides in the months before the 2026 act.
On 26 June 2025, Hun Sen told displaced Cambodians in Preah Vihear province he had been “betrayed” by the Thaksin family and would reveal what they had told him. The next day he livestreamed an eight-point statement on Facebook from Phnom Penh. By late July, Thaksin had posted on X that he wanted to “let the Thai army teach Hun Sen a lesson”. Hun Sen responded on Facebook accusing Thaksin of fuelling war.
The Constitutional Court removed Paetongtarn from office on 29 August 2025 on the basis of the leaked 15 June phone call with Hun Sen. The Bhumjaithai Party had withdrawn from her coalition in June. Anutin Charnvirakul, Bhumjaithai’s leader, replaced her in September and dissolved parliament in December. At the snap election of 8 February 2026, Bhumjaithai won 193 of 500 House seats and Pheu Thai placed third with 74. Thaksin’s nephew Yodchanan Wongsawat, who led Pheu Thai into the election, was named Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation in the Anutin cabinet.
Two days after the cabinet act, on 7 May 2026, Anutin met Hun Manet on the sidelines of the 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu in a trilateral hosted by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Posting on Facebook, Anutin said he had informed Hun Manet of Thailand’s cancellation and that Cambodia “formally acknowledged” the decision. A senior Cambodian official told the Phnom Penh Post that the acknowledgement covered Cambodia’s UNCLOS framework choice, not the cancellation, and that Thailand had not formally notified Cambodia of the MOU’s termination under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Cambodia’s separate Annex V announcement had been made two days earlier.
The legal architecture that made the Sokhonn announcement operative had entered into force two months before the cabinet vote. Cambodia ratified UNCLOS on 6 February 2026; the convention entered into force for Cambodia on 8 March 2026. The bilateral channel that the 2009 cancellation had invoked was no longer the predicate. The international channel that replaced it had been opened before Anutin’s cabinet acted.
Thaksin will report to a probation office. The ankle monitor remains until September.