Democracy is dead, says former Thai PM Yingluck after impeachment

Embattled former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra decried the “death of democracy” in Thailand Friday after the junta-stacked parliament impeached her and prosecutors announced corruption charges that could see her jailed for a decade. The impeachment of Yingluck, the kingdom’s first female premier and the sister of former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, carries an automatic five-year ban from politics. The impeachment and possible criminal case against Yingluck stem from her involvement in a controversial rice subsidy program.

Democracy has died in Thailand today, along with the rule of law. That move to destroy me is still ongoing and I face it now.

Statement from Yingluck Shinawatra posted to Facebook

Experts say the impeachment and criminal charges are the latest attempt by the country’s royalist elite, and its army backers, to nullify the political influence of the Shinawatras, whose parties have won every election since 2001. Both Thaksin and Yingluck are loathed by many Thais in the upper and middle classes, but still command huge loyalty from much of the rural poor —particularly in the Shinawatras’ northern strongholds, where rice farming is a mainstay of the local economy, in what is one of the world’s largest rice exporters.

World yingluck