Thailand’s previous prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has put forward an appeal for a regal pardon, Justice Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said on Thursday. The 74-year-old billionaire, Thailand’s highly renowned politician, started serving an eight-year prison sentence after he came back last week in a vaunted homecoming from 15 years of self-imposed exile.
After landing in a private jet, he was sent to jail to serve his sentence on allegations of misuse of strength and conflict of interest from his days when was governing. Just some time after his arrival, Mr Srettha Thavisin of the Shinawatra family-backed Pheu Thai party sailed through a parliamentary vote to become prime minister, triggering speculation that Thaksin had struck a deal with his previous foes along with the nation’s conservative and royalist military that ousted his party’s governments in 2006 and 2014.
Thaksin and Pheu Thai have rejected this. Whilst his first night in Thailand, he was gone to a police hospital due to chest pains and high blood pressure. Mr Wissanu said Thaksin had appealed for a pardon. Thai law gives the permit to prisoners and they can give a pardon application that is given from the justice minister through the prime minister to the Privy Council before being recieved by the King. Officials convey that the entire thing requires one to two months, if all the paperwork is in alignment.