Thailand’s influential former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has applied for a royal pardon to reduce his one-year prison sentence, his lawyer told reporters on Monday.
Thaksin, 76, is one of the country’s most polarising politicians, the patriarch of a dynasty which has for two decades grappled with the country’s pro-monarchy, pro-military establishment.
The billionaire telecoms magnate is serving his sentence in a Bangkok prison after Thailand’s Supreme Court ruled this month that he improperly served a 2023 sentence in a hospital suite rather than a cell.
“The petition (for a royal pardon) was submitted but I have no comment about this. This is the right of every inmate,” Thaksin’s lawyer Winyat Chatmontree told reporters on Monday outside the jail.
Winyat did not say when the pardon request was submitted, and he did not immediately reply to a request for comment from AFP.
Thaksin was elected prime minister in 2001 and again in 2005. He took himself into exile after his second term was cut short by a military coup.
After returning to Thailand in August 2023, he was sentenced to eight years for corruption and abuse of power.
But he never spent a night in a cell. Whisked to a private room in hospital, his sentence was reduced to one year by royal pardon, before he was freed as part of an early release scheme for elderly prisoners.
The timing of his return and his medical transfer, which coincided with his Pheu Thai party forming a new government, had fuelled public suspicion of a backroom deal and allegations of special treatment.
The Supreme Court ruled on September 9 that the enforcement of his prison sentence was unlawful and that he had not been suffering from a critical health condition.
Long a popular politician among the rural masses, Thaksin’s movement has floundered after a series of legal and political setbacks, including his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra being sacked as prime minister in August.
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© Agence France-Presse
