Poof! Thailand’s former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did a disappearing act despite being heavily monitored and was a no-show at her criminal negligence trial on Friday, where she was looking at facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
“How should I know when or how she escaped?” a perplexed Prawit Wongsuwan, a deputy prime minister, reportedly told reporters this morning at Ministry of Defense.
He said he doesn’t know the whereabouts of Yingluck, who was toppled by the military in 2014 following the “Bangkok Shutdown” protest, where citizens organized city-wide rallies demanding her to step down.
“The escape of Yingluck was unexpected, because before that, she had insisted she would not escape, and the police were stationed outside her house at all times,” he said, in a report by Bangkok Biz News.
Sources in her Puea Thai party said Yingluck left Thailand via Cambodia, and then went on to Singapore, where she boarded a plane to Dubai to join her brother, Thaksin, who is also a former prime minister living in self-imposed exile since being ousted in a 2006 coup. If he returned to Thailand, Thaksin would be facing two years in jail on corruption charges, reported The Guardian.
However, Cambodian officials have denied that they helped Yingluck escape through the country, according to the Phnom Penh Post, saying they had “no record” of Yingluck passing through Cambodia, where Thaksin is known to have a longstanding friendship with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Meanwhile, Thailand has no record of her leaving the country either.
Several foreign media outlets reported that Yingluck is seeking asylum in the UK from Dubai, but Prawit said today that he hasn’t corresponded with the UK yet regarding the extradition of Yingluck.
Analysts say Yingluck most likely cut a secret deal with the junta to exit the country — a charge the military government has denied, according to AFP.
The decision that the Supreme Court was supposed to make on Friday was on whether former Prime Minister Yingluck is guilty for the role she played in her administration’s rice buying program. The program offered poor farmers more than the market price for their crops and was supposed to be the highlight of her administration. However, it went terribly wrong and ended up costing Thai citizens over THB500 billion (USD15 billion).
The Shinawatra political family saga began with Yingluck’s brother Thaksin in 2001. His innovative schemes meant to help poor farmers and other disadvantaged rural Thais won him, and later, his sister, terms in office and the seeming never-ending loyalty of the disenfranchised people they helped.
However, the family has always been maligned by rich, urban Thais, royalists and high-ranking military officials.
