FORMER THAI PRIME MINISTER YINGLUCK SHINAWATRA'S RICE SCANDAL, FLED INTO EXILE TO DUBAI AHEAD OF CORRUPTION VERDICT TO AVOID A JAIL SENTENCE

Thailand's first female Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra  has been named as the first female Prime Minister of Thailand,the former businesswoman drew hordes of supporters whenever she toured her electoral heartlands, taking endless selfies and being showered with red roses.The 50 -year-old businesswoman is the sister of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who is currently in exile.This was Shinawatra’s first time running in an election for the Pheu Thai party and she was a political novice.After her nomination , her campaign received lots of coverage and she quickly stole attention from the outgoing premier Abhisit Vejjajiva.Shinawatra comes from a political family but was not thought to have wanted to pursue the role of Prime Minister.She graduated from university in Thailand before attending Kentucky State University in the United States in 1991.After entering the business world, she became CEO of Advanced Info Service Pcl and then president of the family’s property firm, SC Asset corporation.Shinawatra has a partner and nine-year-old son, the latter of whom often accompanied her on campaign events.Her election comes after a turbulent five years for Thai politics.She will have to find a delicate equilibrium between the coup-prone army and the elite establishment on one side, and the so-called Red Shirt movement on the other.Her brother Thaksin was exiled in 2006.Her campaigning strategy - dubbed fighting with smiles - and her propensity to shed tears in public forged an image far removed from that of the stern junta generals who ousted her from office in a 2014 coup.In private she wielded authority among her party and entourage, in a country where deference is expected towards wealth and power.Her weakness was her elder brother Thaksin, whose deep networks hoisted her to power despite his long absence from Thailand.The billionaire telecoms tycoon has lived in self-imposed exile since 2008 to avoid jail in Thailand for corruption convictions.He was ousted as prime minister by an army coup in 2006, which opened a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his supporters and enemies.Yingluck's premiership was scuttled in 2014 by a court ruling over a technicality.Weeks later the army shunted aside the rest of her administration.For her first two years in office, the outlook seemed very different.The photogenic former businesswoman charmed many of her critics and for a period maintained the peace across Thailand's bitter political divide.She reached out to the military and worked to appease political opponents within Thailand's Bangkok-based establishment, which loathes Thaksin and wants to curb the Shinawatras' 13-year influence on Thai politics.But the shaky truce collapsed in November 2013 after a failed bid to pass an amnesty bill which would have enabled Thaksin's return.The move outraged government opponents who flooded the streets for months-long protests marked by violence that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded.Yingluck became the focus of caustic - and often explicitly sexist - tirades by protest leaders.But the mother-of-one refused to joust with her detractors and held off on a violent crackdown.She took a leaf out of Thaksin's playbook, launching lavish welfare schemes aimed at the rural poor, including the rice subsidy programme.The bungled scheme was a lightning rod for anger among protesters and also became her ultimate undoing after the court deemed her guilty of failing to stop corruption.Yingluck, who graduated in political science before earning a master's degree in business administration in the United States, spent much of her career working in her brother's empire.Rising from trainee status, she eventually became president of the mobile telephone unit of Shin Corp, the telecoms giant founded by Thaksin that was at the centre of a tax scandal in 2006.

Ex Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra impeached.Thai legislature has voted to impeach former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra over an allegedly corrupt rice purchasing scheme.Thailand’s junta-appointed legislature impeached former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and banned her from politics for five years, while the attorney general’s office announced it will file criminal charges against her.

Thai Supreme Court has taken former Thai Prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to court over rice’s scandal.Yingluck,  whose family has dominated Thai politics for more than 15 years, failed to show up at court for judgment in a case centred on the multi-billion dollar losses incurred by a rice subsidy scheme for farmers.She has definitely left Thailand,” said one source, who is also a member of her Puea Thai Party. The sources did not say where she had gone.The struggle between that movement and a Bangkok-centered royalist and pro-military elite has been at the heart of years of turmoil in Thailand. The verdict against Yingluck could have reignited tension, though the army has largely snuffed out open opposition.The charges against Thailand’s first female prime minister, who was removed from office for abuse of power in May days before a military coup, concern her role in scheme that paid farmers above market prices for rice and cost Thailand billions of dollars.The National Anti-Corruption Commission investigating the case says Ms Yingluck was negligent for failing to stop losses from the programme. Yingluck was impeached  by a vote of 190-18 in the 220-member National Legislative Assembly (NLA), which was hand-picked by the junta and is dominated by active or former military officers.There were eight “no votes”, three invalid ballots and one member was absent.Yingluck argues the allegations are politically motivated and has defended the rice program as a way to boost incomes in rural areas.“Banning me for five years would be a violation of my basic rights,”  Yingluck said in an almost hour-long address to the NLA , prior to the vote.“This case that is aimed solely against me has a hidden agenda, it is politically driven.What are the real reasons why former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra stay in Thailand to face trial over rice subsidies, instead she has chosen to flee?According to Thai media sources, she fled the country while facing trial over agricultural subsidies through Cambodia, and then took personal jet direct flight to Singapore where her brother, Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra, also former Thai Prime which fled Thailand over the allegation of real estate misconduct, and then flew to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The Thai Supreme Court has seized Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra's family asset of around $1.5 billion in contested assets, over allegations of corruption and conflict of interest. This makes both of the brother and sister the first two Thai Prime Minister ever to flee court case and court ruling.Mr. Thaksin's sister, Yingluck is in the same boat as her brother facing political backlash, but her whereabouts is still remain a mystery. According to Thai media source she said that both of Thai constitutions, the new one which is still needed the approval from Thai king before it comes into effect as well as the current one is not balanced and neutral due to the repealing system that could put her in jail for decades.Thai official saw this incidents as a bad example for those powerful people who committed crimes and then can go free but punishing the small fish instead, which does not do its justice.However, the Thai communities and Thai Junta government disagree, arguing that she and her government are at fault from leaving a big mess and hardship for Thai farmers' livelihood and Thai rice industries which lost it competitive advantage due to the overpricing of rice.Even though she has freed herself, and don't have to worry about being extradited back to Thailand to serve her time, many of her then senior officials were sentenced to many decades in jail time. If she stay in Thailand and fight this case, Thai Ministry of Justice could put her in jail over the negligence of rice-buying scheme, which cost the country a fortune.Those were apparently the last words from Thailand's ousted prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to a close aide, trying to make sure her son was cared for, before she left Thailand ahead of the court verdict on her criminal negligence trial.Various unconfirmed reports in Thai media say she crossed the land border into Cambodia last Wednesday evening, before taking a flight - possibly on a private plane - to Singapore and then onward to Dubai, where her billionaire brother and former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra keeps a home, while living in self-imposed exile.The court decides criminal case against Thailand's former PM,for a trial on criminal negligence looking into her role in a debt-ridden rice subsidy scheme during her administration, in Bangkok, Thailand, January 15, 2016.Yingluck, whose government was overthrown in a 2014 coup, is the sister of ousted populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself deposed in 2006 and, though now in self-exile, remains at the heart of a decade of divisive politics.The charges Yingluck faces in the Supreme Court stem from her management of a rice subsidy scheme, a flagship policy that helped sweep her to office in a 2011 landslide but which critics say haemorrhaged billions of dollars.Yingluck, ousted shortly before the 2014 military coup, could have been jailed for up to 10 years, if found guilty. Supporters denounced her case as political persecution designed to drive the Shinawatra family out of politics.The verdict is generally seen as a political judgment as much as a criminal one.

Ousted Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has fled the country ahead of a verdict against her in a negligence trial brought by the junta that overthrew her, sources close to the Shinawatra family .The case against Yingluck is the latest in a decade-long offensive against the political machine founded and directed by her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup for alleged corruption and disrespect for the monarchy.

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