By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DE FACTO PHEU THAI BOSS Thaksin Shinawatra is departing for Dubai on the upcoming Friday with the parolee-turned-free man’s schedule to return home yet being undisclosed.
It remains to be seen how long the de facto boss of the Pheu Thai, currently partner of the Bhumjaithai-led coalition government, may stay likely as a Thai business tycoon in Dubai or exactly when he will return to Bangkok after he has reportedly planned to leave for the United Arab Emirates city on the upcoming Friday.
Thaksin has been freed from a one-year jail sentence under the latest royal pardon with his EM ankle bracelet already removed, nullifying a four-month-long parole otherwise scheduled to end in September.
Over nearly two decades, the de facto Pheu Thai boss had divided his time in self-exile between residing in Dubai and globetrotting following the 2006 coup which ousted him as elected premiership.
In 2023, Thaksin returned home and allegedly flouted the law and took legal loopholes only to avoid being literally put behind bars to otherwise serve an eight-year jail term which had been curtailed to only one year under royal pardon previously granted. Instead of jail, he had spent a six-month time in a privileged ward at Police Hospital, allegedly staging a thinly-veiled fake-out as a “critical patient” until he was originally released on parole to return to his Chan Song Lah residence on the Thonburi side of the Thai capital.
Finally, the Supreme Court had ordered for his return to prison where he had literally spent an eight-month period before he was released on parole again last month. Given the latest royal pardon granted on occasion of Her Majesty Queen Suthida’s 48th birthday anniversary, the de facto Pheu Thai boss was among thousands of inmates nationwide to have become free people.
In the meantime, Thaksin’s sister/former coup-deposed prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra who has been remaining in self-exile overseas since the last nine years is more or less speculated to visit her brother during his unspecified stay in Dubai.
Last year, Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra was disgracefully stripped of her elected premiership by court on charges of perpetrating an evident, severe breach of the politician’s code of ethics pertaining to her private, leaked cellphone chit-chat with Cambodian leader Hun Sen about sustained border conflict.
Following the last election earlier this year, his nephew Yodchanan Wongsawat was named deputy prime minister-cum-higher education, science, research & innovation minister under the Pheu Thai quota in the Bhumjaithai-led coalition government headed by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul who had previously performed as member of cabinet under the previous premiership of the de facto Pheu Thai boss over the last few decades.
Yodchanan is son of former prime minister Somchai Wongsawat and Yaowapa Wongsawat with the latter being Thaksin’s sister.
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Top and Front Page – De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Photos – PPTVHD36
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