A Thai court issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra after she failed to show up on Friday to hear a verdict in a negligence case.
The court postponed the verdict until Sept. 27, saying the prosecution didn’t believe that Yingluck is ill. Her lawyer Norawit Larlaeng told the court that she has vertigo and couldn’t attend the hearing. He later told reporters that he doesn’t know where Yingluck is.
Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a 2014 coup, faces up to a decade in jail if convicted of failing to curb losses from her government’s $26 billion rice-purchasing program for poor farmers. She has denied the charges and says the two-year trial is politically motivated.
The verdict threatens to reopen fissures in Thai society that have triggered violent clashes over the past decade between urban royalists and rural backers of exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother. Allies of Thaksin have won the past five elections, only to be unseated by the courts or military.
Thaksin fled abroad to avoid jail time on corruption charges brought after his own government’s ouster in a 2006 coup. Yingluck became Thailand’s first female prime minister after a 2011 election, the last one held in the country.
Yingluck was impeached in 2015 and banned from politics for five years for alleged corruption in the rice-purchasing program. She was also hit with a 35 billion baht ($1 billion) fine over the allegations of negligence in overseeing the policy, which purchased grain at above-market rates to help farmers.
Protest Risk
Yingluck on Thursday had urged her supporters to avoid thronging the court complex in Bangkok, as General Prayuth Chan-Ocha’s military administration steps up security to avert unrest.
Thailand’s currency and stocks were little changed after the court issued the arrest warrant. The benchmark SET index of stocks has climbed about 2 percent this year, one of the worst performers in Asia, weighed down in part by a climb in bad loans in Thailand. Bonds have proved a bigger draw for foreign investors, helping to make the baht the region’s top-performing currency in 2017.
The junta clamped down on political activity after seizing power three years ago following a period of unrest, pledging to restore stability. The current stretch of military rule is one of the longest since the 1970s, in a country with a history of coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.
The promulgation of a new constitution in April set the stage for a possible return to democracy in 2018, though a date for elections has yet to be announced. Prayuth said in a speech Thursday that the country would return to a democratic path soon.
— With assistance by Tang Nguyen, and Yumi Teso.
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