By Thai Newsroom Reporters
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON POLICE Affairs Chair Chaichana Dejdecho today (Feb. 22) categorically denied that his Democrat colleagues have quietly hatched a partisan move to keep self-exiled, deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra from practically following in the footsteps of her brother/de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict on parole Thaksin Shinawatra.
The House committee chair, concurrently a Democrat MP of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, confirmed his partisan lawmakers had earlier drafted legislation to amend corrections of convicts without intent to use it against any specific individuals including Yingluck who has been living in self-exile abroad in the face of a five-year jail sentence earlier delivered to her for convicted misconduct pertaining to her Pheu Thai government’s rice subsidy campaign run over a decade ago.
Yingluck who had quietly pushed for the naming of former real estate mogul Srettha Thavisin as prime minister following last year’s election is largely believed to sooner or later follow in the footsteps of her brother who has never spent a single day behind bars at Bangkok Remand Prison and had been instead granted privileges to stay in a private ward at Police Hospital for mystery-shrouded “illnesses” for six months since he returned from self-exile abroad last August. Thaksin departed Police Hospital where he had roughly spent half of his curtailed, one-year sentence in lieu of the prison for his Chan Song Lah residence upon being granted parole on Sunday.
However, the Pheu Thai-backed prime minister has remained non-committal and tightlipped over criticism that he might probably be pressed to return favours in Yingluck’s speculated homecoming effort.
The House committee chair maintained Thai society be finally rid of double standards with which the authorities might otherwise handle convicts whilst the rules of law and social equality should always be indiscriminately served.
Chaichana said he had earlier called on the Corrections Department to either officially confirm or deny that any convicts may be legally entitled to a specified amount of pay out of the taxpayers’ money for their medical expenses at given hospitals as had been Thaksin’s case at Police Hospital where they had been covered either in part or in full by the Office of National Health Security.
“If it costs the Corrections Department five million baht in medical expenses for Thaksin, the agency should clearly respond whether all other convicts may as well be covered that much,” the House committee chair said.
His comments were made amidst allegations that the costly privileges granted to the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at Police Hospital would almost certainly have been unprovided for other convicts.
CAPTIONS:
File photos of deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra with her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, also former prime minister and current de facto boss of Pheu Thai Party. Top photo: Matichon, Front Page photo: Matichon Weekly
Insert: House Committee of Police Affairs Chair Chaichana Dejdecho. Photo: Thai Rath
