When you do things for Thaksin Shinawatra being his kin or not, you almost always find yourself getting the short and nasty end of the stick while he is untouched. Add to that he is also unconcerned about your well being and sees you is a tool for his own agenda. This is a classic signature of Thaksin to use people for his own benefit and discard them when they are no longer useful. Now Yingluck must face the music for failing to stop a rice pledging scheme that was so corrupt, it nearly caused Thailand to go bankrupt.
Yingluck faces impeachment, and that itself is a bit amazing as impeachment is a tool to remove someone from office, and she has been out of office for the better part of a year already. But when you stand back and look at the bigger picture you can clearly see both sides of the argument about impeachment.
From the don’t impeach Yingluck side, their primary argument is she is already out of office and impeachment does not apply now. However because so much damage was done and Yingluck failed to act, impeachment becomes a stepping stone to criminal charges for her and others that were involved. Because of that the people drafting the new Constitution are adding a paragraph to deal with people after they have left office. Also because of that some place down the road Yingluck could be let off the hook on a technicality of improper usage of a law.
As for Yingluck herself, trying to get a straight answer out of her proved to be an impossible task. Either someone would speak for her, or her answers were so vague and elusive you felt like you ordered a large pizza but only got a slice. It is that vagueness that is now coming back to haunt her. Had she given a proper answer to questions, she may not be facing this stepping stone to a potential criminal act.
It is generally known Yingluck was a puppet Prime Minister and her brother Thaksin was calling the shots from a safe distance away. The rice pledging scheme was Thaksin’s idea to capture both votes, and to leverage legislation to get himself off the hook for the crimes he was convicted of. He really did not care who died to get that, and yes people did die. So sacrificing his sister fits right in to his normal behavior. After all he sacrificed his own son years earlier to avoid paying taxes on the 2006 Shin deal, so doing the same to his sister fits right in to lacking total empathy about anyone.
In the very big picture, this is just one of several things being done to eliminate Thaksin’s influence. For the most part there is near unanimous agreement that all the problems Thailand has suffered through since 2005 are centered around Thaksin. So treating the cause and not the effect only makes sense. All of Thaksin’s influence must come to an end, and laws must be severe enough to make people think several times before deciding to dance with the devil. So the impeachment of Yingluck is part of that cure.
In deeper thought, someone must be held accountable for not stopping a clearly extremely corrupt program. As Yingluck Shinawatra was the name at the top, she ultimately is accountable for all that happens on her watch. The I didn’t know it was that bad, and The reports I got showed it was not that bad, along with It helped a lot of Thais simply is not a good defense. That is particularly so when it was obvious the Government’s books were cooked and they tried to attack the credibility of the people who aired the correct numbers. That simply spells out deliberate attempts to ignore the reality of the situation and were most likely deeply involved in the corruption.
