Why the Yingluck trial is not a political witch-hunt

After summing up all the questions and ambiguities about Yingluck’s culpability, the answer is a resounding YES! She is culpable. Whether or not she knew about rice-scheme corruption, she was the PM, the big boss, and all screw-ups should be laid at her doorstep, otherwise, what’s the point of having a PM at all?
ezzra
Respectfully, I think ezzra misses the point.
The main issue for me is whether this is a political or legal matter.
The scheme was announced during an election, debated in Parliament, and implemented by the government. I will happily concede that it was a stupid policy and very badly implemented. And yes, there was corruption. Where there was corruption, my view is that the perpetrators should be tried, and tossed into the slammer for a long time.
However, stupidity and bad implementation aren’t criminal matters, but rather political.
The best outcome of the rice-scheme saga would have been for the voters to vote the “red” party out of power for incompetence. And if I had had a vote, I would have certainly done so!
Putting a PM on trial who was forced out by a coup is the textbook definition of an unfair trial.
The whole matter is a cock-up. Period.
Samui Bodoh
I think you are missing more than one point. Why do you grant an ex-PM some special status – aren’t we all supposed to be equal before the law? You would jail the corrupt, but won’t assign responsibility to those who accepted it with the job. It wasn’t only the fake G2G deals that were corrupt, the legal deals involving huge agency fees paid to family cronies reek of graft as well.
The stated aim of the policy was to help the poorest farmers, later amended to poor – both terms dropped by her defence. In that aim it was a total failure and at great expense to the public. If that was some sort of sacred promise, why wasn’t the policy amended to more accurately implement its goals?
Stupidity and bad implementation aren’t really criminal matters, but negligence is, and THAT is the charge. Failure to carry out her duties with due diligence, and the attendance records for the rice policy committee and parliament prove that easily.
You claim the trial is unfair, I assume to her. Is not having a trial be fair to the people of Thailand? Should politicians be allowed to squander vast sums of the money they are supposed to manage responsibly, ignore repeated warnings their policy will fail and that it is accumulating huge losses, without any repercussion?
halloween
ThaiVisa