Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin was found not guilty of insulting the king, which put pressure on the Shinawatra family

Bangkok court clears former Thai prime minister Thaksin of royal insult charge, but daughter Paetongtarn faces removal, which puts more pressure on Shinawatra.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the controversial billionaire and former prime minister of Thailand, was found not guilty of insulting the queen by a court in Bangkok.

He was charged because of an interview he did with a South Korean newspaper ten years ago. If found guilty, he could have spent up to 15 years in jail.

Lese majeste is a law in Thailand that says you can’t insult the king. But some people say it’s often used to go after radicals and people who disagree with the government.

The ruling came at the same time that Thaksin’s daughter, PM Paetongtarn, is being heard by the Constitutional Court to decide if she should be removed from office. There is a danger to the Shinawatra group, which has been very powerful in Thai politics for many years.

The verdict on Friday made the family and their friends feel a little better.

At the end of the court case, Winyat Charmontree, Thaksin’s lawyer, told reporters that his client had smiled and thanked his lawyers. He also said that he could now work for the good of the country.

The charge against Thaksin was first brought by the military government in 2016, while he was living in exile. It was brought up again last year, after he returned to Thailand.

At first, it looked like there wasn’t much evidence against him.

The former prime minister told a South Korean newspaper that he thought “some people in the palace” and members of the 19-person privy council, which advises the Thai king, were behind the military coup in 2014 that overthrew his sister Yingluck’s elected government. This was similar to the coup that overthrew his own government in 2006, he said.

The lese majeste law technically doesn’t cover the privy council. The law says that only the king, queen, heir to the throne, or someone serving as regent can be sued for libel.

In recent years, though, the law has been used to make it illegal to do or say anything that could be seen as bad for the queen as an institution.

Some people have been charged with crimes for saying bad things about the late King Bhumibol’s dog and a Thai king from the 1600s.

A young woman was recently given five years in prison for putting up a banner next to a picture of King Vajiralongkorn that was critical of the budget to help people affected by Covid.

Because the law can be interpreted in so many ways, human rights groups see it as a political tool that can be used to scare and silence people who don’t agree with the way things are.

A lot of people thought this was what was happening to Thaksin.

But the judges decided to take the law’s words at face value and said that the defendant should be found not guilty because he had not named anyone.

It has been exactly two years since the former prime minister made his dramatic comeback from 15 years of exile.

At that time, people thought that Thaksin and his longtime conservative opponents had made a deal so that Thaksin’s party, Pheu Thai, which had dropped from first to second place in the 2023 election, could form a coalition government and keep the young reformists who had won the election from taking power.

Thaksin has always said there was no deal, so the terms of that deal have never been made public. However, it is possible that they included an agreement for him to stay out of politics and not draw attention to himself.

But the flashy, rich, and ambitious businessman has never been one to keep a low profile.

He still has the most money for Pheu Thai and makes all the important choices for the party.

When Thaksin’s first choice for prime minister, businessman Srettha Thavisin, was removed by the overbearing Constitutional Court a year ago, Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who had never been prime minister before, took over and became Thailand’s youngest prime minister ever.

She said she would gladly follow his advice because she was a “daddy’s girl.” When she took office, Mr. Thaksin announced his “Vision for Thailand,” which included a controversial plan to make casinos legal. A lot of that plan later became law.

The opposition in parliament has said that the Shinawatra family has a “dual leadership.” Thaksin’s business ties to Hun Sen, the strongman of Cambodia, made people worry about how strongly his government would support Thailand in the border dispute with Cambodia.

This got worse in the private phone conversation that Hun Sen leaked, in which Paetongtarn called him “uncle” and criticized her own army commander on the border. The Constitutional Court has now suspended her and will decide in a week whether to fire her.

At a time when the world is very unclear, it might be thought too risky to lose another prime minister after only a year. It’s not clear who would take Paetongtarn’s place.

Next month, Thaksin will be in court again because he was sent to a hospital to serve a jail term. If he doesn’t go to jail, his party might have to call an early election, which could cost them a lot of seats in parliament because of how badly they’ve been running the government.