In Thailand, constitutional court rules PM's term started when new constitution came into effect

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has ruled that Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha can continue in office and that he had not surpassed his maximum eight-year term limit as premier. [...] Prayuth’s critics had argued that his time in office should be calculated from 2014, when he took power as army commander in the aftermath of a coup that removed Thailand’s elected Pheu Thai party government. Supporters of Prayuth had maintained that his term in office should be calculated from at least 2017, or from when Prayuth took office after his election as a civilian prime minister in 2019. The nine-member court said in its majority opinion [...] that because the constitution came into effect after Prayuth had already taken power, the term limit did not apply to the time he had previously served, since the constitution did not specify if it could be applied retroactively. [...] In a surprise move, Prayuth was suspended as prime minister in August by the Constitutional Court, which had accepted a petition from Thailand’s political opposition calling for it to rule on whether the premier had exhausted his time in office
Read the full article here: Al Jazeera