Police Hospital doctors suspected of unethically keeping ‘sickly’ Thaksin from jail

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

DOCTORS AT POLICE HOSPITAL have been suspected of compromising their professional ethics to keep “sickly” de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra literally away from prison despite his one-year jail sentence.

The so-called Students and People’s Network for Thailand Reform today (Sep.18) called on police chief Pol.Gen.Damrongsak Kittiprapat to promptly find out whether the doctors at Police Hospital taking care of Thaksin might probably compromise their ethical norms to literally keep the “sickly” deposed prime minister from jail.

Pichit Chaimongkol, leader of the network, said the doctors might probably not only compromise their professionalism but the country’s judicial integrity by letting the de facto Pheu Thai boss stay at Police Hospital longer than necessary, thus keeping him from being put behind bars.

He charged that Thaksin could probably have feigned his way from Bangkok Remand Prison to Police Hospital shortly after he had returned from 17 years in self-exile abroad.

Thaksin who had been earlier sentenced in absentia by court to eight years in prison on separate counts of convicted misconduct perpetrated during his previous premiership has been given royal pardon to the extent that his jail term be curtailed to only one year with the possibility of being released on parole by the end of this year.

The de facto Pheu Thai boss who came back on Aug.22 – the date on which real estate tycoon-turned-prime ministerial candidate Srettha Thavisin was successfully named – had spent barely a half day at a nursing unit in the premises of the prison then had allegedly managed to take part in power play, given a cellphone by his hospital bed, allocating cabinet portfolios among coalition partners through his right-hand man/Pheu Thai wheeler-dealer Bhumtham Wechayachai who has become a deputy prime minister-cum-commerce minister.

The Students and People’s Network for Thailand Reform demanded that the police chief unveil the names of those doctors at Police Hospital responsible for the treatment of the “sickly” Thaksin and reveal any illnesses the deposed prime minister is going through.

The anti-Thaksin activist group has planned to call on Corrections Department director-general Ayut Sinthoppand on Friday to inquire whether he may allow the de facto Pheu Thai boss to stay any longer at Police Hospital where he may eventually do beyond a 30-day period which is ending on Thursday.

The department chief is legally required to endorse the hospitalisation of a sickly inmate outside of a prison for longer than a month.

CAPTION:

Pheu Thai de facto leader Thaksin Shinawatra and the Police Hospital where he is staying on the 14th floor. Photos: Matichon

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