Thailand’s ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra to return from exile on Tuesday, same day as political stand-off vote: daughter
- Thaksin Shinawatra’s potential return to the kingdom coincides with a key parliamentary vote that could end a political deadlock to choose a new PM
- The 74-year-old billionaire was ousted in a 2006 military coup and has spent 15 years in self-exile
Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is set to return to the kingdom on Tuesday, the same day as a key parliamentary vote that could end a political deadlock, his daughter said.
The 74-year-old billionaire was ousted in a 2006 military coup and has spent 15 years in self-exile.
Thaksin has long said he wished to return home, but faces multiple criminal charges that he says are politically motivated.
“On Tuesday, August 22, 9am I will pick up my father Thaksin at Don Muang Airport,” his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was one of the Pheu Thai party’s candidates for prime minister, said on Instagram.
His return will coincide with an afternoon vote on whether to approve Srettha Thavisin – from Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party – as prime minister and end three months of political deadlock since a May general election.
To become premier, Srettha needs a majority across the lower house of 500 elected MPs, and the 250-member senate that was hand-picked by the kingdom’s last junta.
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