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Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's former PM, impeached
Sydney Morning Herald - January 23, 2015
Only hours earlier the country's attorney-general declared Ms Yingluck will also be indicted on a negligence-in-office charge that could see her jailed for up to 10 years.
The moves signal that Thailand's military rulers who overthrew Ms Yingluck's government in May have decided to force her from any future role in politics. Ms Yingluck's supporters also see them as aimed at a continuing push to dismantle the political machine of her powerful family.
The impeachment vote automatically bans Ms Yingluck from politics for five years and prevents her contesting the next general election if the military rulers fulfil a promise to allow one to be held by early 2016.
The vote was contentious because it ousted 47-year-old Ms Yingluck under the power of a constitution that has been abrogated and from a position she no longer holds.
More than three-fifths of the 220-seat military-appointed parliament voted on Friday that Ms Yingluck, who won a landslide election in 2011, was negligent in her oversight of a rice subsidy scheme that benefited farmers.
Thailand's National Anti-Corruption Commission had earlier accused Ms Yingluck of failing to curb corruption in the scheme. On Thursday, Ms Yingluck strongly defended the scheme, which had accumulated losses of at least $5.5 billion, saying it benefited farmers. She denied she was responsible for any corruption associated with it.
The scheme turned sour after rice hoarding failed to push up international prices as Vietnam and India overtook Thailand as the world's top rice exporters.
"Banning me for five years would be a violation of my basic rights," Ms Yingluck told the legislators, adding her impeachment was "weird" because it removed her from a position she does not hold. "This case that is aimed solely against me has a hidden agenda, it's politically driven," she said.
The military junta has warned it will act to prevent any protests, using the draconian powers of a 100-year-old martial law it imposed after the May coup.
Gatherings of more than five people are banned under the law, the media is tightly controlled and critics of the junta are taken away for so-called "re-education" in military bases.
Kwanchai Praipana, leader of the Red Shirt movement that supports the Shinawatra family, said Ms Yingluck is the latest of several people close to Mr Thaksin, a billionaire businessman living in Dubai, who are victims of "political persecution".
Somkid Chueakong, a politician from Ms Yingluck's Pheu Thai party, said impeachment would increase voter support for the party at the next election.
Political analyst Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an associate professor at Chulalongkorn University, said the short-term effects of the move against Ms Yingluck are unlikely to be cataclysmic because the military is firmly consolidated under the current high command, with martial law as an instrument to deal with any public demonstrations.
But he said the medium and longer-term impact of going after Ms Yingluck will accumulate grievances likely to be more virulent when they eventually come to the fore. Professor Thitinan wrote in the Bangkok Post that the military's decision to press on with criminal proceedings shows the "gloves are off and the push-back from the Thaksin side will be as unpleasant and undesirable as has been seen in the recent past".
Political parties linked to Ms Yingluck's exiled brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is loathed by Thailand's royalist establishment and Bangkok middle-class, have won every election since 2001 with mass support in the country's north and north-east provinces.
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/world/yingluck-shinawatra-thailands-former-pm-impeached-20150123-12x02e.html.
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