Ousted Thai PM faces trial, political ruin
BANGKOK—Thailand’s first female Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces court on Tuesday at the start of a negligence trial which could see her jailed for a decade and deliver a hammer blow to the political dominance of her family.
It is the latest legal move against Yingluck—sister of fugitive billionaire ex-Premier Thaksin Shinawatra—whose administration was toppled in a military coup nearly a year ago.
She is accused of criminal negligence over a populist but economically disastrous rice subsidy scheme, which paid farmers in the rural Shinawatra heartland twice the market rate for their crops.
Yingluck is not accused of corruption but of failing to prevent alleged graft within the program, which cost billions of dollars and galvanized the protests that eventually felled her elected government leading to last May’s coup.
Thailand’s military-appointed parliament impeached Yingluck in January over the scheme, a move which banned her from politics for five years.
But the criminal case could see her jailed for up to a decade, an outcome that could ruin any chance of an imminent political comeback if and when the military eventually hand back power.
Analysts say the trial is the latest move by Thailand’s military rulers to neuter the Shinawatra clan since they seized power.
“This trial is being brought in order to permanently remove Yingluck from the political scene,” said Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai.
“But placing her behind bars— a friendly, female ex-prime minister—would make her look like a martyr,” he added.
The junta will also this week discuss whether to hold a referendum on a new constitution billed as necessary to heal the country’s divides, curb corruption and expunge cronyism. It has said it will hold fresh elections in early 2016.