[A wealthy businessman who once owned the English soccer club Manchester City, Mr. Thaksin has a private jet and homes in several countries, including in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Some speculate that Ms. Yingluck has joined him in the emirate.]
By
Richard C. Paddock
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Yingluck Shinawatra
arriving at a court in Bangkok on Aug. 1. She forfeited $900,000
in bail by failing to appear on
Friday for a verdict in a negligence case against her.
Credit Rungroj
Yongrit/European Pressphoto Agency
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BANGKOK
— For two years, Yingluck
Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand, battled criminal charges of
negligence and claims that she had cost the country billions of dollars. She
appeared in court regularly and assured her supporters that she would fight
until the end.
“You need to wait and see,” she told The
Bangkok Post last month. “I’ll be there in court to the last day. We will meet
there.”
But on Friday, when the time arrived for the
Supreme Court to render its verdict, Ms. Yingluck was nowhere to be found. She
sent word to the court that she was ill. But senior members of her party say
they believe she slipped out of the country rather than face the prospect of
spending up to 10 years in prison.
Her whereabouts remained a mystery on Sunday.
Officials of her party, Pheu Thai, said they had not heard from her and had no
idea where she was.
Ms. Yingluck’s decision not to appear in
court was costly. She forfeited $900,000 in bail and left her political
movement in disarray, with no clear agenda or plan for moving forward.
“It is now difficult for us to analyze what
to do next,” said Chaturon Chaisang, who served as education minister in her
cabinet. “We want to hear from her and what her role will be now.”
Ms. Yingluck appears to be following the path
of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, into self-imposed exile. He was ousted as
prime minister in a military coup in 2006 after five years in office and left
Thailand rather than face corruption charges.
A wealthy businessman who once owned the
English soccer club Manchester City, Mr. Thaksin has a private jet and homes in
several countries, including in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Some
speculate that Ms. Yingluck has joined him in the emirate.
For Thailand, Ms. Yingluck’s departure is the
end of an era, when the populist siblings ran the country with the backing of
the rural poor, who repeatedly voted them into office only to see the military
take power twice.
Since Mr. Thaksin’s election in 2001, the
country has been split between the rural poor and the urban elite. Under Ms.
Yingluck, who was elected prime minister in 2011, street protests by both
groups paralyzed Bangkok for months.
A court forced her from office in May 2014,
and the military seized power 15 days later. The military leadership brought
calm to the country, but many of its actions have favored the elite over the
poor.
The leadership won passage of a new
constitution last year that would give the military more power and minimize the
chance that another populist could win. New elections have yet to be called.
“Thailand has been stuck for two decades
now,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political-science professor at
Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “The country remains divided and
polarized.”
Mr. Thitinan said that Ms. Yingluck’s
disappearance benefited the authorities by validating the charges against her
and the takeover. He said he would not be surprised if some of the people in
power had helped her leave the country.
“Yingluck’s flight was a victory of sorts for
the generals,” he said. “Her running away reinforces their rationale for the
coup that the rice-management scheme was corrupt and that she knew about it,”
he added, referring to a central issue in her trial.
As prime minister, Ms. Yingluck lifted the
minimum wage by up to 40 percent. She also adopted a rice-management plan,
which was supposed to help poor farmers by paying them above market value for
their rice.
The government stockpiled the rice in the
hope of making a profit, but world prices fell instead. Millions of tons ended
up rotting in warehouses, and the government lost billions of dollars.
Last year, a government committee ordered her
to pay $1 billion in compensation. She protested last month that the country’s
leaders had seized money in her bank accounts before her trial had concluded.
In the criminal case, she is charged with
negligence, accused of allowing corrupt officials and businessmen to benefit
from the rice subsidy.
Mr. Thitinan, the political-science
professor, said that Thailand’s future would depend on whether the military
reached out to her supporters and tried to boost their living standards. If
not, the political stalemate is likely to continue, he said.
“The key will be what the military regime
takes away from all of this,” he added.
Ms. Yingluck, 50, is 18 years younger than
her brother, who is widely believed to have helped run her government from
Dubai.
She is barred from participating in politics
until 2020 after her impeachment by the military-appointed Parliament in 2015.
On the day she was scheduled to hear the
verdict, the same court found 20 others guilty of illegally profiting from the
rice deal. Five of them were officials in Ms. Yingluck’s administration, and
they received sentences of 24 to 42 years in prison.
Ms. Yingluck notified the court that she was
suffering from dizziness and headaches shortly before her hearing. But without
a medical certificate, the court rejected that claim, issued a warrant for her
arrest and ordered the forfeiture of her bail, 30 million Thai baht.
Ms. Yingluck’s niece and spokeswoman, Chayika
Wongnapachant, said she knew nothing about her aunt’s whereabouts. An assistant
to Mr. Thaksin in Dubai said she, too, had no information. Party leaders in
Thailand said they were not looking for Ms. Yingluck because they were afraid
of putting her in jeopardy.
“We believe she left on Wednesday, but we
don’t know how,” said Mr. Chaturon, who also held top posts in Mr. Thaksin’s
government. “We haven’t tried to find out what happened. It is better to let
her inform the public.”
A spokesman for the government, Weerachon
Sukondhapatipak, said that the authorities were investigating Ms. Yingluck’s
disappearance but that they had not established whether she had left Thailand.
Allegations that the government had helped her flee were only speculation, he
said.
“We haven’t heard from a government official
or from Khun Yingluck herself,” he said, using a Thai honorific term. “We have
to wait a little bit longer to be sure that she is actually leaving the country.”
Given Ms. Yingluck’s repeated promise to
fight the criminal case to the end, many of her supporters said they had
initially been shocked and dismayed when they learned that she had skipped the
hearing.
One supporter, Kamol Suksawat, expressed his disappointment
on Ms. Yingluck’s Facebook page an hour after she failed to appear in court.
“Madam, you should have fought to the end,”
he wrote. “They issued an arrest warrant against you. They announced they took
your bail money of 30 million Thai baht. This is like stepping on my heart.”
But a day later, he had changed his mind.
“I am happy,” he posted on her page Saturday.
“You decided it right.”
Follow Richard C. Paddock on Twitter
@RCPaddock.