Activists plan to visit Thaksin at hospital uninvited

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

A POLITICAL ACTIVIST group is planning to visit, albeit uninvited, the “sickly” de facto Pheu Thai boss/convicted inmate Thaksin Shinawatra at Police Hospital on Sunday to see for themselves whether he may remain clinically ill.

Calling themselves the Students & People’s Network For Thailand Reform, the activists told reporters today (Oct.18) they preferred to find out whether Thaksin may have gotten clinically ill to justify any longer stay at Police Hospital beyond the upcoming Sunday, the date on which the 60-day time limit for him to remain outside of a prison is scheduled to end.

Thaksin has been staying in a private ward on the 14th floor of one of the Police Hospital’s buildings where security measures have been specifically tightened for nearly a couple of months.

However, his further stay at the hospital could not be legally allowed beyond the 60-day limit without official endorsement by Corrections Department director-general Sahakarn Petnarin.

The anti-Thaksin activists alleged that the de facto Pheu Thai boss has feigned illnesses to avoid being put behind bars since he returned from self-exile abroad in August. They charged that Thaksin had taken undue privilege which only rendered double standards over the country’s judicial procedures for convicted inmates.

The deposed prime minister had been sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail on separate counts of convicted misconduct during his previous premiership. Given a royal pardon decree ironically lodged by former prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, his jail sentence had been curtailed to only one year with the likelihood of his being released on parole around the upcoming February.

Meanwhile, the activist group today called on Justice Ministry undersecretary Pongsawat Kai-arunsut to promptly see to it that the de facto Pheu Thai boss still has clinical illnesses for which he needs medical treatment outside of a prison or else, they insisted, he be immediately returned to Bangkok Remand Prison.

CAPTIONS:

Top: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra being wheeled to undergo CT scan and MRI at Police Hospital on Oct. 13, 2023. Photo: Thai Rath

Front Page: An image of De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra overlaid on a background of Police Hospital and the 14th floor where he is staying. Photo: Matichon

Also read: Premchai admired but Thaksin condemned: Ex-MP

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