By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER-cum-Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara said today (Apr. 2) unconfirmed hearsay of deposed Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra being named a special envoy for Myanmar attached to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Office might only be an April Fools’ Day prank.
Parnpree was responding to a news report published yesterday – April Fools’ Day – by Irrawaddy news website that Yingluck has been named a UN special envoy for Myanmar though the deposed Thai woman prime minister herself has not been aware of it. He said the questionable news report is yet to be officially confirmed by the UN Secretary General’s Office and doubted it would be found to be truthful.
According to the Pheu Thai-attached deputy prime minister-cum-foreign minister, the Yingluck story, albeit unconfirmed for the time being, would almost certainly lie beyond Bangkok’s diplomatic concerns and by no means involve Thailand as a whole since the deposed prime minister is by no means part of the current Pheu Thai-led government.
Myanmar government spokesperson Zaw Min Tun was quoted by the Chiang Mai-based news website as saying he would welcome the unconfirmed rumours of Yingluck being named a UN special envoy for Myanmar as “great news” for the junta-ruled Naypyidaw.
Yingluck has been living in self-exile abroad following the 2014 coup which ousted her Pheu Thai-led government and been patiently waiting to follow in the footsteps of her brother/de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict on parole Thaksin Shinawatra who returned home without being literally put behind bars last August.
The Irrawaddy reported that Myanmar coup leader-turned-Prime Minister Min Aung Hlaing has personally known Thaksin and that Yingluck would have no trouble performing as a UN special envoy for the war-torn Asean country.
During her previous premiership, Yingluck paid an official visit to Naypyidaw and met with then-Myanmar president Thein Sein and then-opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The former woman prime minister had been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for duty-negligence charges pertaining to the Pheu Thai-led government’s rice subsidy project after her brother had been given an eight-year jail sentence for a few counts of misconduct which was curtailed by royal pardon to only one year.
Nevertheless, the de facto Pheu Thai boss had allegedly manipulated to never spend a single day behind bars at Bangkok Remand Prison and to be allegedly granted double-standard privileges of staying in a tight-security, private ward at Police Hospital for mystery-shrouded “critical illnesses” until he was granted parole in February.
CAPTIONS:
Top: Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara, left, and former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, right. Photo: Thai Rath
Front Page: File photo of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Credit: Thai Rath
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