Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra filed a request for a royal pardon for his corruption convictions which earned him eight years in prison on Thursday August 31, an adviser to the Minister of Justice told Agence France-Presse (AFP). ).
“We have received [the request], the rest will follow according to the procedure (…). The part for the government does not take long, it depends on the king’s thinking,” Justice Minister Wissanu Krea-Ngam told Thai media. The study of the request for royal pardon takes “between one and two months”, a prison administration official said last week.
Returning to the kingdom on August 22 following a fifteen-year self-imposed exile, the 74-year-old billionaire is in a hospital in Bangkok, where he was transferred for health reasons, after a stay of less a day in jail. He returned to Thailand a few hours after the designation of Srettha Thavisin, from the Pheu Thai party controlled by the Shinawatra family.
Pheu Thai regained power at the cost of a controversial alliance
The return to power of his formation, after nine years of domination by the generals, suggests an adjustment or reduction of his sentence, even an amnesty on the part of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who reigns under the name of Rama X.
Mr. Shinawatra is to spend eight years behind bars for three cases of corruption and abuse of power tried in his absence, relating to his management of the country and his former company Shin Corp. Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006, Thaksin Shinawatra is a central figure in Thai political life who, for a long time, embodied opposition to the conservative elites.
Popular with rural areas in the North and Northeast, for pioneering redistributive measures in a country plagued by inequality, he was overthrown by the army in 2006. From abroad, the telecoms mogul has continued to exercise his influence, via Pheu Thai who led his little sister Yingluck to power, from 2011 to 2014, before a new military coup.
At the end of the legislative elections last May, Pheu Thai regained power, but at the cost of a controversial alliance with pro-army parties which excluded the reformists of Move Forward, who came out on top in the polls. This outstretched hand to his former opponents, which angered some of his supporters, was seen as a means of exchange to encourage the return of Thaksin, according to analysts. At 74, the former owner of Manchester City football club suffers from health problems, especially in the heart.
