Commerce Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said on Tuesday his move to sell decade-old rice pledged and warehoused during convicted former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra's administration, and making a show of eating it, was not aimed at getting her a retrial.
Mr Phumtham was responding at Government House to reporters' questions about his trip to two rice warehouses in Surin province on Monday.
"That is not my goal. I am duty-bound to sell the stored rice. ... The [Yingluck] case is not part of my job," Mr Phumtham said.
The commerce minister, also a deputy prime minister, visited two rice warehouses in the northeastern province of Surin on Monday to demonstrate that pledged rice stored there 10 years ago during the Yingluck government remained edible. He ate cooked rice from the warehouses in front of reporters who accompanied him.
Mr Phumtham, a deputy leader of the ruling Pheu Thai Party, admitted the colour of the rice had changed and it was full of dust. However, it could be washed in water up to 15 times before cooking and then it would be ready for consumption.
The shape of the grains remained beautiful and he had no stomach problems on Tuesday, after eating it the previous day, he said.
He planned auctions of the pledged rice within the next month, and said the rice could enter the old-rice markets in Africa.
The Yingluck rice-pledging scheme ran from 2011 to 2014 and was the largest rice market intervention programme in Thai history.
Throughout the scheme the price at which the government bought grain from farmers was well above market price, and for the first time it bought unlimited amounts of rice. It resulted in losses totalling hundreds of billions of baht.
Yingluck fled the country in 2017 just before the Supreme Court sentenced her to five years in jail for failing to stop fake and corruption-plagued government-to-government sales of rice from her rice-pledging scheme.
Last month, her elder brother and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he thought Yingluck would be able to return to the country this year.
Thaksin returned in August last year. His jail term was commuted and he was paroled in February.
In a related development, Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa on Tuesday denied rumours that Yingluck might approach the ministry as the first step to returning.
“I have not received any report yet,” said Mr Maris, a career diplomat who just assumed office this week.
He declined to answer a question about what would happen if Yingluck contacted a Thai embassy abroad about returning to Thailand, saying it was irrelevant to the ministry.
