BREAKING: 'Yingluck has fled Thailand!'
According to several international news agencies, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has fled Thailand. It is not clear to which country.
Yingluck did not show up today for the verdict in the rice mortgage system trial. The verdict was then postponed to September 27.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule today on whether Yingluck is guilty of dereliction of duty during her term of office over the rice mortgage system introduced by her government. She would have ignored warnings about corruption and did nothing about rising costs. If found guilty, she could face up to 10 years in prison today.
Her lawyers gave the explanation for her absence that she suffered from vertigo. The judges immediately said that they gave little credence to that statement and that they considered it more likely that she had fled. Then came an arrest warrant.
Remarkably, she called on her supporters to stay home today. At previous sessions of the Court, more than a thousand supporters came to lend her support. She wrote on her Facebook page: "I would like everyone who is concerned about me and wants to support me, not come to court tomorrow, but follow the case at home."
Source: Bangkok Post
Generals remain in charge of opposition, chased out of the country, democracy absent. Can't go well
This can go 'well' because the Thai does not react to it. The elite and the generals have free rein. If you see how the media reacts to TV tonight, you know enough. There is not a single journalist who dares to express himself critically. Are they too afraid of repercussions or are they really not interested?
Moderator: Please limit the discussion to Thailand.
She is right. And the rice farmers plowed on, without guarantee for a correct price.
So if mismanagement is deemed proven, a government leader in Thailand can go to jail for 10 years. Should they also import in Western countries.
Many prisons will then have to be built to house them all.
I would also flee, knowing the Thai jurisprudence, just a political reckoning
I myself had expected a verdict that all parties could have lived with. Would Yingluck have been informed about the upcoming verdict and is that the reason why she did not appear today? Of course, it remains guesswork and also whether her possible flight has an influence on the upcoming verdict.
Is there anyone who expected something different? This is Thailand. Can she keep her brother company? Have dozens of bank accounts been blocked in this way?
Why no attention for the minister and his state secretary? 18 and 16 years old grumbling?
Perhaps I heard in the corridors what the verdict would be and then, not incomprehensibly, she decided to give her money's worth, today noticeably more police checks on the road, were they already looking for Mrs. Jingluck?
That a prime minister who has received no direct personal benefit from the act of dereliction of duty, at least it has not yet become clear to me, should receive a sentence of 10 years?
There will be a lot of commentary on this opinion.
The current prime minister and government members have already arranged that they can never be prosecuted for what they decide.
Nico B
Yingluck flees Thailand.
What a loss of face for the MP and for Thailand.
Everything is possible, even that the military gave her a helping hand to flee the country.
Judging by feeling, Yingluck seems like a nice person, democratically elected and disowned by a bunch of military men.
Rationally, the entire Sinawatra clique is only out for its own gain to the detriment of the Thai people.
The situation that has now arisen is not favorable for Thailand. Muddling around with Prachut, who now seems to have free rein, leads nowhere.
You'd have to be crazy to finish your process
to wait . I wouldn't either.
Hans Kazan was once again in Thailand .
Years ago one Thaksin Shinawatra asked if he could go to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Was he suddenly disappeared and later resurfaced in Dubai after few years.
A Boss heir of the RedBull concern drove a policeman with his Ferrari in Bangkok , to the land of angels .
Has also disappeared, we do not know where he is, says the Thai police.
Almost everyone knows where he is, flies around the world on a private jet and regularly lives in London and visits the racing grand prixes.
Once upon a time a jet set monk also suddenly disappeared , but now seems to have been arrested in the USA .
Would be extradited to Thailand , only the question remains when .
Then there was an old sick monk head of a sect, living in some kind of spaceship-like temple in Bangkok.
With many supporters who were able to block access for the police and DSI for a long time, later after being allowed to search the spaceship, it turned out that he too could not be found.
And now our beloved Yingluck has also disappeared after observing a slight dizziness .
Huub Hub Barba Trick .
Jan Beute.
The jet set has been behind bars in Thailand for several weeks, after being extradited by the USA.
Although I had already predicted this scenario in small circles, it was still a surprise to hear it.
Once in my life I was involved in a procedure before the Council of State in the Netherlands, as an expert witness. The lawyer told me afterwards that he could already deduce from the question asked by the members of the council what the final verdict would be. That seems to me to be no different in Thailand with an intelligent lawyer. Yingluck already saw the storm coming: to prison for 10 years (the maximum sentence in her case) and to be banned from political office for life. Apparently she didn't want to experience that, almost certainly on the advice of her brother.
With her networks, she probably already knew that a conviction was coming. I think it is possible that someone on behalf of the government called her at the beginning of this week and told her that she could choose: wait for the verdict and almost certainly be convicted) or flee to another country. In the latter case, the government would look the other way here and there. (She appears to have left in a government official's car; Prawit said no movement has been seen from her house in the last two days. That's right because she had already left on Wednesday night.) She did what the government wanted most: flee . By implicitly admitting guilt (which she had not done so far), tarnishing the image of the Pheu Thai (unreliable) and no longer being a burden to the government in the publicity or as a martyr in prison.
Nor would I be surprised if she prepared everything in the deepest secrecy and did not even inform the friends of the party and perhaps close relatives of her plans. The more people know about it, the more it can leak out and go wrong. There are more things happening in Thailand of which a few really know the finer points.
All in all, a personally dramatic and understandable decision, but very bad for Thailand and people's trust in politicians. The first reactions of Thais in my area: why was she not as persistent as before and opted for a prison sentence that would undoubtedly be shortened to about 4 or 5 years through amnesty, good behavior, etc.; and then return to the political arena. Just like Kuhn Chuwit. It would have made her immortal. Now she is identified with her brother. The Shinawatra family's public political role now appears to be over.
Ok I think that's not too bad, her big brother is also still very popular, especially in the Isaan.
His portrait hangs in many huts, just like that of the deceased king.
Don't think that Taksin just gives in, he first had to hold back to protect his sister, but now all brakes are loose, you can count on that.
I wrote: the PUBLIC political role. In the background or better behind the scenes, Thaksin has never been away. Thaksin was/is much more of a politician, a man with ideas and the power to implement them than Yingluck. In my opinion, unfortunately, too much inspired by resentment, self-overestimation and self-interest. I don't think you will hear much (anymore) from Yingluck. She was already a clone of Thaksin as prime minister.
I think it is good for the current government that it has left, because otherwise a conviction could have led to skirmishes and the current government certainly does not want that.
Shinawatras are adored in large parts of Thaliand, where they did a lot for, North and North East, this feeling among those people is only strengthened by the fact that the elected Prime Ministers had to flee. I think that less and less Thai are happy with the current state of affairs.
The question remains to what extent this so-called flight has been programmed for.
If convicted, they run the great risk of causing further unrest among her supporters, and if she is acquitted or given a suspended sentence, the same unrest caused by her opposition may begin. The government and the judiciary now have until September 27 to find a way to prevent these unrest.
If it really is a flight, it is also the fault of the current government, which of course can never expect that a suspect will stay at home in the event of a possible conviction of 10 years in prison, waiting for her conviction. Better security would have been normal here, to say the least.
How these people can then travel undisturbed for years with an international arrest warrant is a mystery to me.
Politically inspired arrest warrants are not taken into account in democratic countries (and others through bribes ..) ... With Thaksin's CV he would easily be recognized as a political refugee ... Elected PM deposed by coup and convicted by the same coup pledgers judges ... benefit of the doubt in his favor, especially in our North Sea countries
If she fled Thailand, she could never have done so without the permission of the army, because they would have watched and stopped her if she fled Thailand….
In addition, the army has an interest in a conviction, but certainly not in an arrest.
That only leads to new unrest.
I'm sorry it turned out this way, actually she wasn't that bad and neither was the plan. After all, Russia has done with the grain for years. No one could have foreseen that other countries would suddenly grow more rice and the market would collapse.
I don't know if it's good or bad for the country, but I probably would have done the same if I were in that situation.
Why were criminals like Thaksin and his sister Yingluck, who stole tens of billions of dollars from the people, not put in pre-trial detention because they were a flight risk.
An ordinary thief is immediately imprisoned.
Answer, because it suits the junta that they flee.
She may have received a push from the regime. In prison she would have been more damaging to the regime because she would have been given a martyr status. Now that she is out of the country this can be presented as a cowardly flight. Much less damage. At least they wouldn't have bothered to stop her. They're not retarded. They should have kept a closer eye on her then.
Deposit was 30 million THB
Yinglucky? flight says enough……the whole system is rotten through and through!
oh people,
Nice to read all those suspicions, it seems to me again a large part of vague gossip, it's just like with the course of the bath some shout at 38.85 is still far from 39 bath,
It is clear that she came into this position with the support of her family.
It was also clear that with thaksin the genie came out of the bottle and could not be turned back.
When she has left, I can only think about that, okay, the Thai prison will not be a cozy single room like in the Netherlands.
So I think one can take into account that the red and yellow shirt camps will continue to exist, with the military as an alternative.
Agree, Rising Sun.
Politics remains a dirty game.
You better stay away from it.
We don't know the ins and outs anyway.
I do believe that corruption was high in her area.
However, I don't know enough about it so I better keep my mouth shut.