PM urged to skip double standards over Thaksin as convict at large

By Thai Newsroom Reporters

PRIME MINISTER SRETTHA Thavisin was today (Nov.22) pressed to stop exercising double standards in coping with two criminal convicts at large, one being de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra.

Former MP Thepthai Senapong posted on his Facebook page to call on the prime minister to immediately skip his double standards over the two convicts who are practically keeping themselves from being put behind bars though they both have been earlier ruled as convicts and given jail sentences.

Thepthai, the former Democrat lawmaker who has already served 16 months in jail due to an electoral rigging lawsuit in his southern home province, alleged that the Pheu Thai-backed prime minister has apparently exercised double standards by ordering an all-out hunt for one convict, namely Chaovalit Thongduang, aka Sia Paeng, who had escaped from a hospital in Nakhon Sri Thammarat and was in a hideout on Banthat mountain range, whilst doing nothing about the other, namely Thaksin, who has been staying at Police Hospital since the last three months to keep himself from jail.

Though the crimes earlier perpetrated by the two convicts at large were not mutually connected, both have evidently flouted the country’s judicial procedures and rules of law to stay at large today, according to the former lawmaker-cum-former inmate.

Anti-Thaksin activists calling themselves members of the Students’ & People’s Network For Thailand Reform alleged that the de facto Pheu Thai boss had merely feigned “illnesses” to keep himself from literally being put behind bars and insisted that the Pheu Thai-led government quickly return him to Bangkok Remand Prison to serve his curtailed jail term.

Thepthai said Srettha has not only failed to bring Thaksin to jail but remained tightlipped when it comes to the contentious legal loopholes involving the deposed prime minister-cum-convict at large.

One of Srettha’s predecessors, namely deposed prime minister/Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra, had quietly endorsed his first-ever political venture to rise to premiership following last May’s general election.

The “sickly” de facto Pheu Thai boss who has been staying at Police Hospital for “illnesses” the details of which remain a mystery for three months now had been earlier sentenced in absentia to an eight years’ jail which has been curtailed by royal pardon to one year with the probability of being released on parole as soon as next February.

Thaksin who had returned from 17 years of self-exile abroad following the 2006 coup allegedly took his part in the power play over the setup of a Pheu Thai-led coalition government and allocation of cabinet portfolios among coalition partners literally from his private ward at the hospital, giving out orders via a cellphone to Pheu Thai wheeler-dealer Phumtham Wechayachai.

CAPTIONS:

Top: Former MP Thepthai Senapong in prison uniform, left, and Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, right. Photo: Matichon

Insert: Chaovalit Thongduang, aka Sia Paeng, who escaped from a hospital in Nakhon Sri Thammarat and is hiding out on Banthat mountain range. Photo: Thai Rath

Front Page: Thepthai Senapong, right, and de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra, left. Photo: Thai Rath

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