Thaksin can return once reconciliation law goes into effect : FM
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Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra should return to Thailand once a new law on national reconciliation goes into effect in three or four months, Foreign Minister Surapong Towichukchaikul said yesterday.
Surapong, who is also an MP from the ruling Pheu Thai Party, said he saw no obstacles to such a law and believed that most Thai people wanted to see national reconciliation being achieved.
While celebrating Songkran in Laos and Cambodia last week, Thaksin encouraged national reconciliation, saying he could then “return home” in time for his birthday on July 26.
The Opposition and political critics have said the reconciliation law had been designed to act as a front for granting Thaksin amnesty and whitewashing the wrongdoings he committed while serving as prime minister.
In 2008, Thaksin was sentenced to two years in jail for abuse of power, but he left the country just before the Supreme Court read the verdict and has not returned since.
Surapong yesterday called on Thai people to forget about the past and look to the future. “If we reconcile, all our conflicts will be over and Thaksin will be able to return. If we only look at the past, we will never reach the future. Today Thailand needs to look toward the future,” the minister said.
He said the Cabinet would soon be considering a draft law on national reconciliation. “For the country to achieve reconciliation, all parties should forgive. We should stop playing politics or our country will go nowhere,” he said.
The families of those killed during the unrest fuelled by the more than two months of street protests by Thaksin’s supporters, have recently called for facts about the deaths of their loved ones. They said that granting amnesty was not the only aspect of achieving true reconciliation.
