Ex-premier urges backers to stay away from court

BANGKOK — Friends and foes alike of former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra are anxiously awaiting a verdict Friday by the Supreme Court on charges she was criminally negligent in implementing a rice subsidy program that is estimated to have cost the government as much as $17 billion and could send her to prison for 10 years.

Thousands of supporters had been expected to appear outside the courthouse to demonstrate their solidarity with Yingluck, but on Thursday she posted a message on her Facebook page urging them not to come. Yingluck said she was worried about their safety in case there is “chaos that could be instigated by a third party, as security officials have always said.”

“I want those who wish to support me to listen to the news from home, to avoid risking any unexpected problems that could arise from those who have ill-intentions toward the country and all of us,” she wrote, without naming anyone. She also said that security measures would make it impossible to interact faceto-face with supporters.

Thai authorities have earlier threatened legal action against anyone planning to help transport her supporters and announced plans for a massive deployment of security personnel outside the court, adding vague hints of possible violence that spurred scare headlines in local media.

The upcoming verdict is generally seen as a political judgment as much as a criminal one. The case against Yingluck is the latest in a decadelong offensive against the political machine founded and directed by her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup for alleged corruption and disrespect for the monarchy.

Thaksin, a telecommunications mogul, has been in selfimposed exile since 2008 to escape a prison sentence on a conflict of interest conviction. The 2006 coup triggered years of sometimes-violent battles for power between his supporters — mainly the less well-off rural majority who delivered him thumping election victories — and opponents — mainly royalists, members of the urban middle and upper classes, as well as the military, which in 2014 ousted Yingluck’s elected government.