Prosecutors yesterday formally indicted influential former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra under the kingdom’s strict royal insult laws over comments he made nearly a decade ago.
The case against the 74-year-old billionaire, twice elected prime minister and ousted in a 2006 military coup, is one of four before the courts that could unleash fresh political instability in the kingdom.
Thaksin, the patriarch of the Pheu Thai party that leads the coalition government, appeared at Bangkok’s Ratchada Criminal Court accused of lese majeste over an interview he gave to South Korean media in 2015.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Today a state prosecutor indicted Thaksin Shinawatra and the court accepted the case,” the Thai attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Thailand has some of the world’s strictest royal defamation laws protecting King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his close family, with each charge bringing a potential 15-year prison sentence.
Thaksin was also charged under the Computer Crimes Act, which can carry a jail sentence of up to five years.
His lawyer, Winyat Chatmontree, said Thaksin denied all charges and had “no intention of speaking about anyone protected by Article 112” — a reference to the section of the criminal code dealing with lese majeste.
Thaksin was granted bail on a 500,000 baht (US$13,600) bond and ordered not to leave the nation without permission, court officials said.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 19.
Critics say the lese majeste laws are misused to stifle legitimate political debate, and there has been a spike in their use since youth-led anti-government street protests in 2020 and 2021.
Thaksin is the biggest name among the more than 270 people charged under the laws since the protests, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, a legal group that handles many cases.
Thaksin’s case came on the same day the Thai Constitutional Court deliberated on three other cases that could spark a political crisis.
One seeks the ouster of Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin under ethics rules, over the appointment of a Cabinet minister with a criminal conviction. In another, the election commission is seeking the dissolution of the main opposition Move Forward Party (MFP), which won most seats at last year’s general election, but was blocked from forming the government.
The court said it would sit again in the MFP case on July 3 and in the Srettha case on July 10.
In a third case, the Constitutional Court ruled that the ongoing election for a new senate is lawful, throwing out a challenge that sought its postponement or cancelation.
For two decades, Thai politics has been dominated by a struggle between the conservative military pro-royalist elite and progressive parties — first those of Thaksin and his allies, and now the MFP.
Thaksin returned to Thailand in August last year after 15 years in self-exile on the same day Srettha took power in an alliance with pro-military parties previously bitterly opposed to Thaksin and his followers.
The timing seemed to suggest a truce in the long-running tussle as both sides sought to see off the threat posed by the MFP, but the Constitutional Court cases could rip any such deal apart, and Thaksin has hinted that he believes the lese majeste allegations are an establishment ruse to undermine him and Srettha’s government.
“I think the latest developments signal that he is still somewhere between a political mastermind and a hostage,” said political analyst Napon Jatusripitak of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
“He still finds being used as a buffer by the establishment against popular pro-democracy movements coming from below,” Napon said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS