Bangkok, Thailand – A court is poised to decide whether Thailand’s most consequential and controversial political figure of the past 25 years, Thaksin Shinawatra, insulted the country’s revered monarchy, a crime that can land a culprit in jail for up to 15 years.
The charge, under Thailand’s strict “lese-majeste” royal defamation law, stems from an interview the 76-year-old business tycoon and former prime minister gave to a South Korean newspaper in 2015 regarding a military coup that toppled his sister and then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014.
Though holding no official role in government, Thaksin remains a towering figure bearing over Thailand’s stormy politics, and the verdict on Friday will test the state of his long-fraught relationship with the country’s powerful royalist establishment.
“The prosecution is of great political significance,” said Verapat Pariyawong, a Thai law and politics scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London.
“If found innocent, Mr Thaksin would rely on the verdict as proof that he has always been a loyalist, contrary to the accusations by his political opponents which inflamed conflicts over the past two decades,” Verapat told media.
A guilty verdict, on the other hand, could “trigger a new round of political conflicts”, he said.
“Some would see it as a breakdown of the so-called grand compromise that paved the way for Mr Thaksin’s return to Thailand, and undoubtedly many will link the guilty verdict to other pending major court decisions not just against Mr Thaksin but also his daughter and suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra,” he added.
After 15 years in self-imposed exile, Thaksin returned to Thailand in 2023.
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