Somchai vows Yingluck and he won’t flee
Ex-premier says the innocent don't need escape plan
FORMER prime minister Somchai Wongsawat has maintained that he and Yingluck Shinawatra, another ex-premier from the Pheu Thai Party, will not leave the country to escape legal cases against them.
He said they were both confident of their innocence and would remain in the country to fight the separate court cases against them.
“If we escape, it means we are really guilty. As long as we are confident of our innocence, we don’t need to escape,” Somchai said in an exclusive interview with the Nation Group recently.
Somchai, a leader of the Pheu Thai Party, is being tried by the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders for alleged abuse of power over a deadly crackdown on a yellow-shirt protesters in 2008. That year, he served briefly as prime minister in a Pheu Thai-led government.
The same court is also trying Yingluck for alleged negligence in connection with her then-government’s rice-pledging scheme. She is blamed for the massive irregularities stemming from the corruption-plagued project, which led to an estimated Bt500 billion in losses to the state. Somchai is brother-in-law of Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra, who is another former prime minister from the Shinawatra family.
Thaksin fled the country in 2008, shortly before the Supreme Court sentenced him to two years in jail for abuse of power while serving as prime minister. He has lived in exile overseas since then. Certain Pheu Thai figures recently commented that Thaksin’s escape was a “big lesson” and that they did not think Yingluck should repeat the same mistake.
When asked about Pheu Thai’s future in this troubled time for many of its key figures, Somchai said he was confident in the justice system and that the party’s figures would accept any court verdict.
He also said that Pheu Thai did not belong to any family in particular. “Pheu Thai is not an asset of any particular family. All the party members are owners of the party,” he said.
Somchai also asserted that the charter draft completed last week by the Constitution Drafting Commission would result in a series of weak and unstable coalition governments. He said future administrations would also face a lot of restrictions from strict scrutinising mechanisms implemented by powerful independent organisations.
