Former Thai PM Thaksin expected to be released
Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is expected to be released this weekend.
The telecommunications magnate and former Thai PM was granted parole on Tuesday.
He was deemed as being qualified for an early release due being in an eligible category of inmates that either have serious illnesses or are aged above 70. Thaksin, who served as Thailand’s PM from 2001 to 2006, was ousted by the military in 2006. After being in a self-imposed exile for 15 years, he returned last year where he was sentenced to 8 years in prison of charges of corruption, later commuted to a year by the king. He has spent six months of that sentencing in a hospital detention centre over an undisclosed health condition.
Thaksin’s release is regarded by many as being as a watershed moment in Thai political history as the past two decades have been marked by a struggle of power between the establishment and the populist Thaksin camp. While his release marks a truce in many aspects, it will likely be contested by both royalist conservatives and progressives. While the formers criticisms focus his populism, the latter’s criticisms focus on the wealthy not being subjected to the same standard of the law.
