By Thai Newsroom Reporters
NO MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE on Police Affairs are being allowed to visit de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict Thaksin Shinawatra at Police Hospital as planned for tomorrow (Jan.12).
Police Hospital spokesperson Sirikul Srisanga said today no members of the House panel, headed by Democrat MP Chaichana Dejdecho, are being allowed to visit the deposed prime minister in person since the hospital’s chief executive official Thaweesilp Wechawitharn has deemed it “very unsuitable” for them to do so, no matter if they may insist when they arrive at the hospital as scheduled tomorrow.
Neither can the House committee members make a video call to the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at large should he disagree in the first place, according to the hospital spokesperson.
However, the visiting MPs will be received in a conference room of the hospital where they may make an inquiry about Thaksin’s case with doctors in charge whilst the patient’s privacy will strictly remain intact, she said.
According to the House committee chair, the planned visit to the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum–convict at large is primarily designed to find out whether he may have been given any allegedly excessive privileges unprovided for others at Police Hospital.
Thaksin has been staying purportedly for medical treatment at the hospital in the premises of the National Police headquarters well beyond a 120-day period earlier provided by law since his return from self-exile abroad in August.
Given the secrecy-shrouded “illnesses”, the de facto Pheu Thai boss has never spent a single day behind bars at Bangkok Remand Prison where he would otherwise have served a curtailed, one-year jail sentence under court conviction of misconduct which he had earlier perpetrated in office.
The politically powerful convict has been invariably accused of flouting the country’s judicial process by manipulating to keep himself from jail whilst the Corrections Department has allegedly applied double standards in handling his case and Police Hospital has allegedly granted him undue privileges.
Literally from his tight-security, private ward at the hospital in the premises of the National Police headquarters, the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at large allegedly masterminded the setup of a Pheu Thai-led coalition government, allocation of cabinet portfolios among coalition partners and naming of his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra as leader of the ruling party which he himself had founded, albeit under a different name, over the last couple of decades.
The globetrotting Thaksin returned home after 17 years of self-exile on Aug. 22 – the date on which former real estate mogul Srettha Thavisin was overwhelmingly voted a Pheu Thai-backed prime minister by lawmakers at parliament.
Thaksin’s sister/deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra had allegedly quietly pushed for the naming of Srettha as one of a trio of Pheu Thai partisan contestants for prime minister in last year’s general election.
CAPTION:
De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra next to a sign showing the 14th floor of the Police Hospital where he has been staying since his return to Thailand in August last year. Top photo: Thai Rath, Front Page photo: Matichon
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