By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE EVENT IN WHICH the Supreme Court lifted a lawsuit filed against Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s father/de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra but simultaneously decided to open a court trial on it may be viewed as an unprecedented phenomenon in Thai judicial history, a prominent Thammasat University academic commented today (May 1).
Prinya Thaewanarumitkul, the Thammasat law lecturer, said he considered yesterday’s ruling delivered by the Supreme Court judges in charge of criminal lawsuits against persons in political positions as an unprecedented, perplexing case in which the de facto Pheu Thai boss as well as relevant government officials will be legally obliged to appear before court for hearings scheduled for June 13 though the case repeatedly lodged by a former lawmaker was formally waived.
In the meantime, they were ordered by the Supreme Court judges to submit pieces of evidence pertaining to Thaksin’s “temporary” release from Bangkok Remand prison to Police Hospital in a 30-day time.
Those government officials include the head official of the prison, the director-general of the Corrections Department and the chief doctor of Police Hospital, among others, involved in the questionable release of the mega-billionaire power player from the prison to the hospital without prior permission from court.
Upon his return from self-exile abroad in 2023, Thaksin had been considered a convict at large due to his eight-year jail sentence convicted by court which had been curtailed by royal pardon to one year on counts of power abuse perpetrated during his previous premiership a couple of decades ago.
Prinya remarked that the de facto Pheu Thai boss could probably be exonerated if those relevant officials obliged to show up for court trials produced pieces of evidence to clinically manifest his “critical illnesses” to the extent that he could not have been treated at the prison’s hospital, thus prompting them to rush him over to Police Hospital where he had been contentiously granted privileges of staying in a private ward for a six-month period until he was released on parole early last year.
If no truthful evidence was finally produced in court, the mega-billionaire power player would probably be returned to jail to serve his one-year term, according to the Thammasat law lecturer.
Those government officials including the chief of the Corrections Department, an agency under care of Justice Minister Thavi Sodsong, had apparently taken legal loopholes to grant the arguable privileges to the mega-billionaire power player amidst allegations that they may have deliberately perpetrated a contempt of court simply by doing so.
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Top and Front Page: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Photos:
Insert: Thammasat law lecturer Prinya Thaewanarumitkul. Photo: Thai Rath
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