Ex Prime Minister Thaksin receives pardon on Royal Family birthday

It is customary for the Royals of Thailand to issue Royal pardons on the birthdays of certain members. I do not know the legality of all of this, but I think that the Thai government is not obligated to observe the pardons yet they always do for reasons I don't get involved in.

If you don't live in Thailand or are not Thai, there is a good chance that you don't know who Thaksin Shinawatra or his family are, but basically they were for a while, like the Kennedy family as far as Thai politics.

Loved by many who are on their side and hated by those in the opposing party, the Shinawatra family has been elected to the office of Prime Minister three times. Once with Thaksin, once with his sister Yingluck, and later again with his youngest daughter Paetongtarn. This is a very strange familial political dynasty because in the case of father and sister they were both forcibly removed from office and in the case of Thaksin, the entire government was removed by force in a coup d'etat.

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I don't know a great deal about Thailand politics and it is very taboo for a foreigner to have a vocal opinion about it, but from what I understand the Shinawatra family has been champions of the poor in the north east, while kind of being reviled by most of the rest of the country. He and his sister promised and I believe delivered on many promises of handouts for the poor and I was actually around for when Yingluck had some rather bizarre campaign promises such as a "tablet for every child" that resulted in very poor quality tablets being given away at schools that were all broken in about as much time as you would expect tablets that are give to children would be.

Thaksin was an unusual case though, because he was removed by the military forcibly, then fled the country to avoid arrest and later lived in exile for a very long time because of threat of arrest if he were to ever return. He holed up in Dubai or somewhere like that which doesn't have a extradition agreement with Thailand, and there he remained until one day flying back to turn himself in for trial.

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His arrest was, of course, much more pleasant than yours or mine would be and he was given a bit of a hero's welcome by a lot of the population who saw him as a martyr and saw the military junta that took control of the country in his absence as evil. The "other side" of course saw the situation as the opposite.

While I do not know the specifics of his trial, it was kind of a foregone conclusion that they HAD TO convict him of something since the man was forcibly ousted from a legally elected position because of supposed egregious wrongdoing. He ended up getting sentenced to a 1-year prison term for his "crimes" and while I am sure he simply went to a luxury resort for a little while he was later released to house arrest and received probation instead. While the details were shady, one of the things he was forbidden from engaging in as part of his probation was having anything to do with politics. I don't know if he held up his end of the bargain, but seeing as how this country has a very obvious two-tiered justice system, I doubt he ever stopped being involved in politics, even while IN prison.

Even though his sentence was more staged than real and he was already out of prison and living however he wanted to, the current Queen of Thailand issued a Royal decree for a full pardon of the man on her birthday which is June 3rd.

Now he is no longer required to adhere to any of the conditions of his probation, nor is he required to keep his nose out of politics. I doubt he ever stopped because how else can you explain both his sister and his daughter getting elected to the position of Prime Minister which is something that cannot be accomplished without the support of both the people as well as at least one of the major political parties in Thailand?

Understand this: The Shinawatra family is extremely wealthy and influential. Their net worth is in the multiple billions and their arms extend into many or perhaps all aspects of Thai life and business. I don't really have an opinion about he or his family's involvement in politics, but I wouldn't say that they were any better (or worse) than anyone else that ended up in that position. Just like almost anywhere else in the world, the political side of things in this country is very corrupt, and the two or three major parties bicker and grandstand while in the meantime almost nothing ever actually gets done.

The Royal pardon is major news though because this country still has massive amounts of rules regarding defaming any of the Royals or their decisions, so the fact that this man was ever convicted of anything will be a topic that nobody will ever bring up in an official sense. To do so would bring about cause for Lèse-majesté rules and as silly as it sounds that such a thing exists in the world today, this country takes that very very seriously.

I doubt he will personally return to politics because he doesn't have to. He will probably operate a lot of the political workings of this country from the background, which is what he has been doing ever since he was ousted from office in 2006.