Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra jailed after return from exile

Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has ended years of exile and returned to the country to face a jail sentence, as parliament broke months of deadlock by picking a candidate from his Pheu Thai party as the country’s next leader.

The choice of Srettha Thavisin as prime minister ends almost a decade of military leadership in the southeast Asian country and follows an election in May won by the progressive Move Forward party.

However, Move Forward was locked out of power by Thailand’s conservative military-royalist establishment, which instead struck a deal with former adversaries in Thaksin’s party to install Srettha as prime minister.

Parliament voted only hours after Thaksin, a charismatic billionaire who was deposed in a coup d’état in 2006, arrived from Singapore and was greeted by crowds of supporters.

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Thaksin, who has lived mostly in Dubai since leaving Thailand in 2008, has dominated politics for two decades. He is reviled by the royalist-military establishment but admired by rural and working-class voters for poverty alleviation policies.

The 74-year-old, who was convicted in absentia on charges of corruption and abuse of power, later appeared before the supreme court, where a judge confirmed his sentence of eight years in prison, according to a statement from the court.

He will be moved to a special unit to monitor his medical conditions, officials said, but few observers expect the former prime minister to serve significant time behind bars.

“Thaksin has to come back to regenerate some popularity [for the party],” said Paul Chambers, an expert in Thai politics at Naresuan University. “Pheu Thai is now the status quo party.”

“Thaksin has lost the moral high ground,” he added.

Pheu Thai, which finished second in the election, has assembled an unconventional 11-party coalition including the military-backed incumbent Palang Pracharath party and the United Thai Nation party. The latter is led by outgoing prime minister Prayut Chan-ocha, a former military chief who has ruled since unseating Thaksin’s younger sister Yingluck in a coup in 2014

[ Thais cheer poll winner Move Forward as opposition parties agree to coalition ]

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Pheu Thai had pledged to support Move Forward, which grew out of antimonarchy protests in 2020 and shocked the political elite by sweeping to victory in May on a platform of wholesale reform to the military and monarchy.

But Move Forward failed to attract enough partners to form a government, in part over its vow to amend a lèse-majesté law that imposes prison sentences of up to 15 years for insulting the monarchy.

Unelected senators chosen by the former military government were able to stop the party’s leader, 42-year-old US-educated Pita Limjaroenrat, from being elected prime minister in a vote last month. He was later blocked from contesting the post again and barred from parliament pending an investigation into his ownership of shares in a defunct television broadcaster.

Pheu Thai’s wager to reclaim power could trigger a public backlash. A poll by the National Institute of Development Administration released on Sunday showed almost 65 per cent of respondents disapproved of the party’s co-operation with military-backed groups.

Srettha, the former chief of Sansiri, one of the country’s largest property developers, on Monday denied that the party had “misled” supporters despite pre-election vows that it would not join a coalition with military-backed parties.

Pheu Thai needed to “acknowledge the harsh realities and make difficult choices to progress and aid the people”, he said.

The next government will face considerable challenges following almost a decade of military rule, including reviving southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy, which has struggled to recover after the coronavirus pandemic, expanding just 1.8 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter. Household debt has soared to more than 90 per cent of gross domestic product.

Thaksin’s return came at “a very high cost” for the party, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, senior fellow at the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University. Its supporters “were shot at and killed by the military, whose parties Pheu Thai is hopping into bed with to form this government ... just to get Thaksin back”.

Thaksin “is desperate to come back”, Pongsudhirak added. “It might be his last window. After this, who knows when he could come back again, and under what conditions.” – Copyright the Financial Times Limited 2023