Bangkok: Deposed Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra was on Thursday indicted by the country’s anti-graft body over a controversial rice subsidy scheme and will face impeachment in the upper house that could see her banned from politics for five years.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission voted unanimously to indict 46-year-old Yingluck in the rice-pledging case, a day after she was dismissed from office by the Constitutional Court for abuse of power for the benefit of her powerful family.
The court had unanimously ruled that Yingluck had a part in the transfer of Thawil Pliensri from the position of National Security Council secretary general. The controversial rice-pledging scheme for which she was indicted today saw farmers selling rice to the government for more than the market value.
The scheme proved to be costly and the government was unable to pay the farmers. “The commission considers there is enough evidence to indict (Yingluck) and refers (the case) to the Senate,” Panthep Klanarongran, chief of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) told reporters.
The case will now be voted on at the Senate. If impeached, Yingluck will be barred from politics for five years. Both the rulings are a huge blow to the pro-government “Red Shirt” movement.
However, the anti-government People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) welcomed the developments with protesters who were demanding Yingluck’s resignation organising a march through the main Sukhumvit road on Thursday.
Yingluck, Thailand’s first woman premier, had been in office for two years, nine months and two days since her Pheu Thai Party won the 2011 election. Her victory displeased the elite and urban middle class, which believed she was merely a clone of her elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in 2006.
Her attempt through an amnesty bill to engineer a pardon for Thaksin, who was sentenced to prison, sparked a series of mass protests in Bangkok led by PDRC.
About 25 people have been killed and hundreds others wounded in political violence in six months of protests. (PTI)
