By Thai Newsroom Reporters
DE FACTO PHEU THAI BOSS-CUM-CONVICT at large Thaksin Shinawatra will likely be released on parole as soon as next month only if the commander of Bangkok Remand Prison deems it appropriate, according to a senior government official.
In a press conference at the Ministry of Justice headquarters, the Corrections Department’s deputy director-general Sitthi Sutheewong said Nasthee Thongplad, the prison’s commander, is legally obliged to decide whether Thaksin should be released on parole and then forward his decision to the department’s director-general Sahakarn Petnarin and Justice Minister Thawee Sodsong for acknowledgment.
Neither is the agency’s chief or the justice minister legally obliged to approve or disapprove it since they are merely bound to acknowledge it, according to the deputy director-general.
The Corrections Department has earlier issued a contentious regulation to allow the allegedly privileged-ridden convict to literally stay somewhere outside of the prison for more than a 120-day period earlier provided by law.
The billionaire, politically powerful convict, who has been staying for undisclosed “illnesses” at Police Hospital for 136 days now, may be eventually released on parole after half the one-year jail term earlier delivered to him by court has elapsed by late next month, according to the deputy director-general.
Concrete reasons which the prison’s commander may cite in support of the deposed prime minister’s imminent parole include his being over 70 years old and being currently affected by secrecy-shrouded “illnesses.”
The de facto Pheu Thai boss-cum-convict has never spent a single day behind bars at Bangkok Remand Prison where he had been originally destined to since he returned from self-exile abroad last August to face criminal charges of misconduct which he had perpetrated during his previous premiership nearly a couple of decades earlier.
Whether an EM bracelet may be put around the likely parolee’s ankle for a certain period of time is yet to be decided upon by the prison’s commander as well.
Thaksin who had practically managed to assume a pivotal part in the country’s power play literally from his private ward at Police Hospital may engage in political activity after he has been freed, according to the deputy director-general.
Today’s comments made by Sitthi apparently dampened a sustained effort of a group of anti-Thaksin activists to resume their peaceful, street protest outside Government House early next month in the face of the de facto Pheu Thai boss’s alleged disrespect of the country’s judicial process and double standards allegedly practised by the relevant authorities.
They have accused him of merely feigning “illnesses” to keep himself from jail, given legal loopholes and hush-hush assistance from certain government officials.
CAPTION:
De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Top photo: Sanook.com, Front Page photo: Thai Rath
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