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Thailand on edge ahead of Yingluck verdict

Bloomberg Published on Fri, Aug 25, 2017 / 8:03 AM GMT+8

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(Aug 25): A top court in Thailand will rule Friday on charges of negligence against former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a verdict that risks rekindling political tensions in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy.

Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a 2014 coup, faces up to a decade in jail if convicted of failing to curb losses from her government’s US$26 billion ($35 billion) rice-purchasing program for poor farmers. She has denied the charges and says the two-year trial is politically motivated.

The verdict threatens to reopen fissures in Thai society that have triggered violent clashes over the past decade between urban royalists and rural backers of exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother. Allies of Thaksin have won the past five elections, only to be unseated by the courts or military.