By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PHEU THAI LEADER PAETONGTARN Shinawatra today (June 1) quoted her father/de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra as saying a lese majeste lawsuit filed against him in court was no cause for concern at all.
Paetongtarn cited Thaksin’s assurance that he will truthfully defend himself in court against the lese majeste case filed by 40 senators and quoted him as saying he had ultimately found it no cause for concern.
Given a certified claim of being infected with Covid-19, Thaksin has earlier excused himself from attending the Office of the Attorney-General’s formal readout of the lese majeste lawsuit filed against him last week. The de facto Pheu Thai boss is scheduled for June 18 to be brought by the OAG to the Criminal Court to formally face the criminal case.
It remains to be seen whether the billionaire, politically powerful Thaksin will be released on bail that day.
According to the Pheu Thai leader, the monarchy-offending charges had been originally lodged against her father by a former attorney-general who had been named by the 2014 coup junta under leadership of former army chief-turned-prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha during his time of self-exile abroad.
Pheu Thai MP Chusak Sirinil, known as one of the ruling party’s legal experts, has recently concluded that the charges of the de facto Pheu Thai boss having breached the lese majeste law, also known as Section 112 of the Criminal Code, were “politically connected” with Prayut’s coup which had deposed his sister/former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra from power.
The coup junta had earlier charged that Thaksin had unduly mentioned the monarchy in alleged association with the 2006 coup which had ousted him from elected premiership during an interview with a news agency in Seoul three years later.
Thaksin had earlier evaded court verdicts, thus read out in his absentia, which had found him guilty of power abuse charges perpetrated during his previous premiership and originally landed him an eight-year jail sentence.
Upon his return from 17 years of self-exile overseas last August, the de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict at large had had his jail term curtailed by royal pardon to one year during which he had not spent a single day behind bars in Bangkok Remand prison but been contentiously granted privileges of a prolonged stay in a private ward at Police Hospital for undisclosed “critical illnesses” until he was granted parole earlier this year.
Nevertheless, lese majeste lawsuits are largely known to involve the judiciary process which could probably take a number of years before court verdicts are due with convicts being sentenced to a range of three to 15 years in jail.
CAPTION:
De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, left, and his daughter/Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Both photos: Thai Rath
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