Thailand Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said that he sees Thaksin Shinawatra playing a role in government once he’s freed from prison — a sign of how the former premier continues to loom over the nation’s politics.
“I believe he has value to add to the government and to the people of Thailand,” Srettha said during an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin in New York on Wednesday. The new premier is seeking to revive an economy whose growth has lagged neighbors during nearly a decade of military rule.
Prime minister from 2001 until a coup in 2006, Thaksin still carries sway as the patriarch of a family that has dominated Thai politics for two decades despite having been found guilty, in absentia. Upon his return, he was sent to jail to serve eight years and moved shortly thereafter to a police hospital after complaining of chest pain and high blood pressure.
“He was, and probably still is, the most popular prime minister in the history of Thai politics,” the Thai leader said of Thaksin who’s considered an influential figure in Srettha’s Pheu Thai party. “Obviously, that comes with good reasons and if he becomes free it would be unwise of me not to seek his opinion and other prime ministers as well,” he said.
The new prime minister is seen as the more palatable choice for Thailand’s conservative royalist establishment after the military-appointed Senate blocked Pita Limjaroenrat’s premiership bid when his reformist party pushed to relax the country’s law that penalizes insulting the royalty.
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