Yesterday, a court in Thailand denied permission for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to travel to Qatar, supposedly for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, due to growing scrutiny of the six-month hospitalization that followed his return to Thailand in 2023.
In a ruling yesterday, the Appeal Court upheld a Criminal Court ruling handed down last week, which denied the 75-year-old permission to travel. According to a Bangkok Post report that cited a former senator, there were two reasons for the denial: the first was that there was no proof of a scheduled meeting between Thaksin and Trump. The second is that the trip falls too close to a June 13 Supreme Court hearing that has been scheduled in connection with Thaksin’s six-month stay at the Police General Hospital following his return from self-imposed exile, an issue that is the subject of renewed political and legal attention.
Thaksin made a sensational return to Thailand in August 2023, after 15 years of self-exile. The return was made possible by the political realignment that followed the general election of May 2023, which saw Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party eclipsed by a more progressive challenger, the Move Forward Party (MFP), which won a plurality of seats.
When the military-appointed Senate closed ranks to block the MFP from forming the government, Pheu Thai formed a coalition that included several conservative and military-backed parties that had long opposed Thaksin. As part of this “devil’s deal,” as some critics have termed it, Thaksin’s return to Thailand – once nearly unthinkable – became the precondition for a new alignment designed to marginalize the MFP.
After touching down in Bangkok on August 22, Thaksin was taken into custody to begin serving his eight-year prison sentence. Almost immediately, however, he was transferred to the Police General Hospital after complaining of a variety of health complaints, including chest tightness and high blood pressure. There he remained until he was granted parole and released in February 2024.
The transparently political nature of these arrangements, which allowed Thaksin to avoid spending even a single day in prison, has since been widely criticized, both by Thaksin’s staunch royalist critics and progressive parties like the MFP and its successor, the People’s Party. All of these critics have noted Thaksin’s apparently healthy demeanor upon his arrival to Bangkok, as well as the miraculous recovery he seems to have made following his release.
The issue has become a subject of legal scrutiny due to a complaint filed with the Supreme Court by former Democrat MP Charnchai Issarasenarak, who has on several occasions asked the court to investigate Thaksin’s hospitalization, alleging that he may not have been sick and was instead the beneficiary of a special privilege.
According to a report by Nikkei Asia, the court dismissed Charnchai’s complaints but acknowledged on the most recent occasion that they “raised concerns over the enforcement of Thaksin’s prison sentence.” On April 30, it decided to open its own investigation into Thaksin’s health while in custody, ordering Thaksin and the various involved agencies, including the Bangkok Remand Prison, the Police General Hospital, the Medical Council of Thailand, the Department of Corrections, the, the Office of the Attorney General, “to submit all relevant evidence” pertaining to Thaksin’s health within 30 days. It then scheduled a hearing for June 13, which all parties have been ordered to attend.
The Medical Council held a meeting on May 8, after which it penalized three physicians involved in Thaksin’s hospital stay, one of whom received a warning for failing to meet professional standards, and two others who had their licenses suspended for providing false information. The Council’s vice president, Dr. Prasit Watanapa, said that these actions should not be taken as evidence of whether or not Thaksin was genuinely ill, but also noted that there was insufficient evidence that he was truly sick.
The Supreme Court’s investigation, which may lead to further legal consequences for Thaksin, including contempt of court charges, adds to the politico-legal troubles facing Thaksin, who has assumed a prominent position in the Pheu Thai government led by his daughter Paetongtarn. (She has strenuously denied that he father has received any special treatment.) Thaksin is already prohibited from leaving the country without permission because of a pending lese-majeste and computer crime charges stemming from a 2015 interview that he gave with a South Korean newspaper. According to the Bangkok Post, witness testimony in this case is scheduled for July.
The initiation of the case suggests that despite the accommodations of the “devil’s deal,” many royalist Thaksin opponents still harbor a strong mistrust of the former leader, or perceive that he has overstepped the political boundaries of the deal by inserting himself so actively into the affairs of government.
As Ken Mathis Lohatepanont wrote in his newsletter The Coffee Parliament yesterday, the case could come close to undoing the political pact that sealed Thaksin’s return to Thailand, and Pheu Thai’s return to government.
“An unfavorable finding to Thaksin could force him back to prison. It could also bring down the entire government, as many officials – including Thaksin’s daughter Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra – have staked their credibility to insist that Thaksin was genuinely ill,” he wrote. “Even as the government muddles along, the walls continue to close on Thaksin and his party.”