By Thai Newsroom Reporters
IT REMAINS TO BE seen whether Attorney-General Itthiporn Kaeothip will file a lese majeste lawsuit against de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra in the Appellate Court now that the Criminal Court has lifted the case and acquitted him today (Aug.22).
Though the attorney-general is being given a 30-day time to decide whether to proceed to the Appellate Court with the lese majeste case against Thaksin, father of the court-suspended prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, after he has been exonerated by the Criminal Court today, the period of time for a proceeding of the case may be extended by 30 days at a time, according to Office of the Attorney-General spokesperson Sakkasem Nisaiyok.
Nevertheless, if public prosecutors in their capacity as the plaintiff performing under care of the attorney-general win the case to the extent that the Appellate Court overrule the Criminal Court’s verdict and judge Thaksin guilty as charged, the de facto Pheu Thai boss as the defendant will have the right to fight it to the end in the Supreme Court, given the possibility that the legal battle which was initially triggered since the last decade might eventually be prolonged into the next.
The Criminal Court ruled the power player not guilty of breaking the draconian lese majeste law, also known as Section 112 of the Criminal Code, after the coup junta headed by former army chief-turned-prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha who had ousted his sister/fugitive prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014 had managed to file the case against him the following year.
Thaksin had been accused of mentioning His Late Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej for alleged involvement in the coup, purportedly violating the lese majeste law, but the Criminal Court ruled otherwise to the extent that the phenomenon in which he had evidently mentioned “palace circle”, privy councilors and the military in relation to the coup had by no means involved the late monarch.
The then-fugitive former prime minister who had been deposed in a previous coup of 2006 had given an interview with Chosun Media news agency in Seoul one year after the coup had been successfully staged by Prayut, currently a privy councillor, who had ironically endorsed his homecoming after 17 years in self-exile in 2023.
In another development, Supreme Court judges in charge of criminal lawsuits against persons in political positions are scheduled for Sep.9 to deliver a verdict on an unprecedented, sensational lawsuit filed against the woman prime minister’s father on charges of taking legal loopholes with undue assistance of senior government officials to avoid being literally put behind bars at Bangkok Remand prison and be granted double-standard privileges of staying in a premium ward at Police Hospital for a six-month period under disguise of a “critically ill” patient.
The Medical Council of Thailand has officially ruled that certain doctors at the prison and hospital had unjustly compromised their professions to collude with him and that his symptoms had not been so clinically critical as claimed.
CAPTION::
De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra outside the Criminal Court today, Aug. 22. 2025. Top photo: Naewna, Front Page: Amarin TV
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