Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is serving a one-year prison term for corruption, is due to be released on parole in May, the Department of Corrections said Wednesday.
Thaksin, 76, is scheduled to leave prison on May 11 and must comply with all parole conditions until his probation ends, including wearing an electronic monitor, the statement added. Authorities said his age and the fact he had less than a year left on his sentence justified the early release.
Thaksin began serving his sentence on September 9 at Bangkok’s Klong Prem Central Prison. The sentence followed court proceedings over whether officials mishandled his return to Thailand in 2023 after years in self-exile.
Ousted in a 2006 military coup, Thaksin fled Thailand in 2008 as he faced charges of conflict of interest, abuse of power and corruption dating to his time in office. A billionaire businessman, he has maintained the charges were politically motivated.
Upon his return in 2023 he was initially given an eight-year prison term. After reporting to prison he complained of ill health and was transferred to a state hospital in the middle of the night, spending less than a day behind bars and serving the sentence in a hospital suite. The king later commuted his sentence to one year, and Thaksin was released on parole six months later in February 2024. Thailand’s constitutional monarchy gives the king the final word on pardons.
Electoral politics since 2001 have been dominated by populist parties loyal to Thaksin, and his 2006 ouster set off a long period of instability driven by a power struggle between his supporters and Thailand’s conservative royalist-military establishment.
In elections earlier this year, Thaksin’s Pheu Thai Party suffered its worst performance in decades. Anutin Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai Party, representing the conservative old guard, won the most seats in parliament — a rare victory for a conservative party in recent Thai politics. Pro-democracy groups have historically won public support but been removed from power by powerful Constitutional Court rulings or military coups.