THAILAND: Thailand’s former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, returned to the country after 15 years in exile and was subsequently imprisoned. However, many suspect that a deal has been struck to ensure he serves only a brief jail term.
Thaksin arrived on a private jet ahead of an upcoming vote for the next Thai leader, with the leading candidate being from Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party. He faces sentences of up to eight years for cases he claims were politically motivated.
Thaksin, known as one of Thailand’s most successful elected leaders, has long been a concern for conservative royalists, who have supported military coups and legal actions against him to diminish his influence.
However, he is now back, years after a military coup overthrew him. He was touched at Bangkok’s major airport by shouts from a large crowd of devoted “red shirt” supporters who had gathered the previous night to see him.
Accompanied by his two daughters and son, Thaksin briefly appeared outside the airport terminal to honour a portrait of the king and queen. Shortly after, the 74-year-old was swiftly transported to the Supreme Court, where he received an eight-year sentence based on three prior convictions. Subsequently, he was sent to Bangkok Remand Prison.
Prison officials there have stated that, due to his advanced age, he will be placed in a section equipped with necessary medical devices. Following his arrival, he will undergo a 10-day quarantine period. For the initial five days, he will remain in his room as part of the quarantine procedure, as confirmed by authorities.
There is conjecture that Thaksin might consider requesting a royal pardon. The prison authorities announced on Tuesday that he will have the opportunity to submit a petition for a pardon from his confinement. The timeline for this process typically spans from one to two months.
Thaksin’s Pheu Thai party is anticipated later today to join a coalition government, completing a complex three-month journey that has brought Thailand back to where it began. It started with the exuberant dreams of a new dawn led by the radical, youthful Move Forward party, which gained the most seats in the May election.
Move Forward initially collaborated with Pheu Thai, but it is now apparent that the coalition will include practically everyone but the reformers, including two parties run by previous coup leaders—a deal Pheu Thai pledged it would not make.
Pheu Thai maintains that there is no connection between the two developments. Few individuals hold that to be true. It is true that the unelected senate, a 250-seat constitutional landmine placed in Thailand’s political landscape by the military junta that ruled for five years following a 2014 coup, has bound Pheu Thai’s hands.
Additionally, Pheu Thai’s election results, which were worse than projected and saw it lose a significant amount of support to Move Forward and fall to second place for the first time, made it harder for it to negotiate.
The 500 MPs who were elected may cast their votes alongside the senators, all of whom were chosen by the junta. Their flimsily disguised mission is to prevent any party from challenging the status quo, the alliance of the monarchy, military, and big business that has dominated Thai decision-making for decades.
Unsurprisingly, despite the coalition’s overwhelming majority in the lower house, they refused to support it. When it came time for Pheu Thai to create a new alliance, it had to accept some of its erstwhile adversaries in order to gain Senate backing.
However, some Pheu Thai politicians contend that the party should have held out for a more favourable arrangement by avoiding alignment with the staunchly conservative groups. Forming a minority administration without Pheu Thai and Move Forward would likely result in swift collapse since senators are excluded from regular parliamentary votes on key matters such as the budget.
Nevertheless, the Pheu Thai leadership chose not to wait and even extended an invitation to the ultra-royalist United Thai Nation Party to join the coalition. This is noteworthy because the United Thai Nation party’s leaders have previously expressed strong criticism towards the Shinawatra family and their supporters.
They had a significant impact on overthrowing the previous Pheu Thai administration under Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister. The fact that these two factions will now be part of the same government highlights the notable shift in Thai politics.
In the end, the long-running conflict with the Shinawatra family was overshadowed by the ultra-royalists’ perception of danger from Move Forward and from a younger generation of Thais calling for a discussion about the monarchy’s riches and power.
For the Shinawatras and the more business-focused factions of Pheu Thai, returning to power and ensuring Thaksin’s return took precedence over the party’s image.
However, within Pheu Thai, there are those who find the pragmatic nature of this deal unsettling. They caution that the party might alienate its once-devoted grassroots supporters, potentially leading to a lasting decline in its dominant position in Thai electoral politics, upheld for two decades.
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