By Thai Newsroom Reporters
IN WHAT WAS SEEN as a dumbfounding twist in an historic legal battle intertwined with “last-ditch lobbyism” on the part of de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, a pivotal victory is being patiently anticipated for his daughter-turned-prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra who could possibly be exonerated of all relentless charges under the impeachment lawsuit filed against her in court.
The mega-billionaire, power player has taken “lobbyist” approaches in covertly negotiating with unnamed members of the superelite, ultra-conservative powers-that-be to save Paetongtarn, currently suspended at the order of the Constitutional Court from doing her executive duties as head of government pending a court verdict on the historic impeachment case, from being otherwise found guilty and deprived by court of her prime-ministerial status, according to partisan sources.
Paetongtarn who has managed to continue to stay in the Pheu Thai-led cabinet as culture minister could possibly be found by most judges of the Constitutional Court to have committed an “inadvertent mistake” with a slip of the tongue, they said. Such verbal errors on her part could possibly be ruled “naive and inadvertent” without doing critical damage to the country and thus acquitted of the impeachment charges which would otherwise hold her guilty of perpetrating conduct in severe breach of the ethical code and lack of evident honesty whilst handling Thai-Cambodian border conflict, given last month’s leaked telephone talk between the Thai woman prime minister and Cambodian leader Hun Sen.
The power-playing, hard-lobbying Thaksin’s personal conviction has been more or less deepened to the extent that his embattled daughter be judged innocent and finally exonerated by court and that she triumphantly return to take helm of the Pheu Thai-led government around the latter part of this month or early next month as had been the case of his own in 2001 in which Thaksin, during his previous premiership, was determined by a narrow majority of the Constitutional Court judges to have made “an inadvertent mistake” and acquitted of asset concealment charges, according to the partisan sources.
Paetongtarn had spontaneously branded a Thai army commander in charge of border security measures “one of those on the opposite side” and verbally offered to do whatever the Cambodian leader may have wanted her to do to peacefully end the shared border tensions during their leaked telephone talk.
The Constitutional Court consisting of a total of nine judges could possibly deliver a verdict in split-decision mode with the majority vote, however slim, finding the suspended prime minister “completely innocent and pardonable,” one partisan source said.
Over a couple of decades earlier, the Constitutional Court judges voted 8:7 to narrowly clear Thaksin of the asset concealment charges.
Plans and schemes of the opposition bloc scrambling to find an “interim” prime minister primarily tasked with the dissolving of the House of Representatives to call a general election in foreseeable future notwithstanding, Paetongtarn would finally win over the painstaking legal battle and come back to run the country until the end of the Pheu Thai-led government’s four-year term scheduled for 2027, thanks to the fruitful “lobbyism” conducted by her power-playing father, they said.
Thaksin would undoubtedly prefer to keep his daughter in power rather than replace her with Pheu Thai MP Chaikasem Nitisiri for prime minister if she was eventually ousted by court since the latter who was among a trio of partisan contestants for head of government was hardly seen as submissive and reliable to the de facto Pheu Thai boss.
CAPTION:
De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra and his daughter/suspended prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, above, and alone, Front Page. Photos: Naewna
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