Former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra says she sees light at the end of the tunnel now that the country has returned to a democratic path, 10 years after the coup that ousted her government.
Yingluck said she has hope for the future in comments posted on X on Wednesday, the 10th anniversary of the military coup led by Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha.
“Ten years have passed,” she wrote. “It’s been quite a long time since May 22, 2014, and now my hope for a restored democracy in Thailand is rising.”
The coup toppled a caretaker government headed by Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan, who was appointed caretaker prime minister after Yingluck was suspended by the Constitutional Court on May 7 pending the outcome of a malfeasance case.
The case stemmed from the order Yingluck signed transferring Thawil Pliensri, who then served as National Security Council (NSC) chief, to work as an adviser to the prime minister. He was relaced by Pol Gen Wichean Potephosree, then the national police chief.
The transfer of Pol Gen Wichean in turn created a vacancy in the police chief’s office for Pol Gen Priewphan Damapong, a deputy who happened to be the brother of Potjaman na Pombejra, the ex-wife of Yingluck’s brother Thaksin Shinawatra.
The Supreme Court in December 2023 ultimately acquitted Yingluck of malfeasance in the case filed by Thawil.
Yingluck fled the country in 2017 just before the Supreme Court sentenced her to five years in jail for failing to stop corruption-plagued rice sales, one of the country’s biggest graft cases with losses of hundreds of billions of baht.
In her social media post on Wednesday, Yingluck also expressed her confidence that Thailand will have a new constitution mandated by the people.
“We are waiting for a new charter that will lead Thailand back towards real democracy,” she wrote.
In a related development, the main opposition Move Forward Party warned the public that the remnants of the Prayut administration are still spreading their “roots and branches”.
In a commentary on its Facebook page, the party said many people see no improvement in the country’s development over the past decade in spite of two general elections, one in 2019 and the other last year.
The party said it was because the so-called Prayut governing system was deep-seated and made resilient to change by a complex web of political elements.
Those elements include a widespread network of people and organisations that have benefited from the 2014 coup, said the party.
These people and organisations continue enjoying privileges brought by political, economic and social structures designed to preserve the status quo of the unelected, it said, apparently referring in part to the appointed senators, whose term recently expired, and their right to vote in the selection of a new prime minister.
