By Thai Newsroom Reporters
IN WHAT WAS SEEN as a technical respite quietly provided for de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, a court trial on the Police Hospital fake-out case against him has been put off until after the next couple of weeks.
The Supreme Court judges in charge of criminal lawsuits against persons in political positions have reportedly delayed the court hearing alongside the filing of affidavits by the mega-billionaire, power-playing Thaksin as well as the relevant authorities until June 25, thus giving the defendant some technical respite and more time to fight his multiple legal battles. The filing of the affidavits to the court had been originally set for a 30-day period since last month.
Thaksin, father of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, will certainly not attend the court trial scheduled for the upcoming Friday and will only be represented by one of his lawyers to respond to the evidence-based allegations that he had merely feigned as a “critically ill” convict without literally being so in order to be granted the privilege of staying for a six-month period in a premium ward of Police Hospital in lieu of Bangkok Remand prison’s hospital upon his homecoming from self-exile overseas in 2023.
The Medical Council of Thailand had launched an investigation into Thaksin’s fake-out saga and then officially ruled that the prime minister’s father’s health conditions had not been so “clinically critical” as had been previously, falsely claimed.
Proceedings of the court trial over the Police Hospital fake-out case notwithstanding, Thaksin is separately scheduled to attend an unrelated hearing before the Criminal Court in the second week of the upcoming July pertaining to a lese majeste lawsuit earlier filed against him.
The lese majeste case refers to the event in which the de facto Pheu Thai boss had mentioned the monarchy of alleged involvement in the 2006 coup which deposed him from elected premiership during an interview with a news agency in South Korea in 2015. The Thai monarchy cannot be constitutionally associated with or involved in political businesses.
Whether the prime minister’s father would finally manage to escape again to circumvent any future penalty by court is up to anyone’s guess since he already did so in 2008 and globetrotted in self-exile until he returned home without subsequently spending a single day behind bars to otherwise serve a curtailed, one-year jail sentence nearly a couple of years ago.
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Top and Front Page: De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Photos: Thai Rath
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