Elderly activists resume anti-Thaksin protest outside Government House

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

DOZENS OF POLITICAL ACTIVISTS yesterday (Feb.2) resumed a street protest against de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at large Thaksin Shinawatra outside Government House where they have planned to hang around for a month.

Pichit Chaimongkol, leader of the anti-Thaksin demonstrators, mostly being elderly persons, said the protesters have returned to a corner of the street outside Government House where they have planned to spend days and nights until March 3 in anticipation of a response from Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin to questions about the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict.

Thaksin, alleged to have surreptitiously played a part in the power play over the setup of a Pheu Thai-led coalition government and the allocation of cabinet portfolios among coalition partners, has never spent a single day behind bars despite his having been earlier sentenced in absentia to a curtailed, one-year jail term for a few counts of misconduct perpetrated during his previous premiership.

Pichit said the peaceful protesters are expecting the prime minister as well as Justice Minister Thawee Sodsong to respond to the yet-unanswered question of whether Thaksin’s prolonged stay at Police Hospital due to mystery-shrouded “illnesses” may have been justified by law or whether the law may have been practically compromised and privileges may have been excessively provided for him, albeit unprovided for other convicts.

Both Srettha and Thawee have earlier maintained that no privileges had been provided or legal loopholes used and denied that the authorities including the Corrections Department had compromised the law in favour of the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at large.

Nevertheless, Thaksin who returned from 17 years of self-exile abroad on Aug. 22, the same date on which the former real estate mogul was named a Pheu Thai-endorsed prime minister, has been staying in a private ward at Police Hospital for more than five months now and more or less speculated to be released on parole by the latter part of this month.

Srettha had been quietly promoted by Thaksin’s sister/deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra as one of a trio of Pheu Thai partisan candidates for prime minister alongside Thaksin’s daughter/Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra following last year’s general election.

Prayut Chan-o-cha who had ousted Yingluck in the 2014 coup which he had orchestrated as army chief, then named himself head of a junta-installed government and been named a Palang Pracharath-ticketed prime minister after the 2019 election proceeded with an unexpected, ironic event in which royal pardon for Thaksin was requested, granted and enforced accordingly by him a few days before his time as caretaker prime minister ended following last year’s election.

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The anti-Thaksin protesters outside Government House. Photos: Thai Rath