Thailand’s former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra entered a plea of not guilty on Tuesday at the start of a trial that could see her jailed for a decade, which critics say is part of a politically motivated campaign against her family.
Supporters chanted “Yingluck! Yingluck!” as the ex-premier entered the Supreme Court in Bangkok to be formally read the charges against her of dereliction of duty in overseeing a rice subsidy scheme that lost billions of dollars.
“I am confident in my innocence,” Ms. Yingluck told reporters. “I hope the court will grant me justice, and that everything will go according to due process under the law.”
Ms. Yingluck was ousted from her post as prime minister by a court decision that came two weeks before the military staged a coup in May 2015.
She is being charged with dereliction in overseeing the controversial rice subsidy programme, which temporarily cost Thailand its crown as the world’s top exporter. The same charges also led to her impeachment in January by the military-appointed legislature, which banned her from politics for five years.
She faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty, a ruling that would deepen the country’s decade-long political crisis.
The programme was a flagship policy that helped Ms. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party win elections in 2011, and Ms. Yingluck has argued it was aimed at helping poor farmers who were paid about 50 per cent above what they would get on the world market. The programme, however, racked up losses of at least $4.46 billion as the Thai government stockpiled mass quantities of rice. Prosecutors said Ms. Yingluck ignored multiple warnings from several state agencies about possible corruption none of which has yet been proven in court.
Earlier this year, the National Anti-Corruption Commission recommended that the Finance Ministry sue her personally for at least 600 billion baht ($18.4 billion).
Thailand has been plagued by political turmoil that boiled over after the army ousted Ms. Yingluck’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in a 2006 coup. That putsch was part of a societal schism that in broad terms pits the majority rural poor, who back the Shinawatras, against an urban-based elite establishment supported by the Army and staunch royalists who see Ms. Yingluck’s family as a corrupt threat to the traditional structures of power.
Ms. Yingluck’s opponents argue the Shinawatras have used their electoral majority for personal enrichment and to subvert democracy.
Tuesday also marks the fifth anniversary of a bloody Army crackdown against demonstrators backing the Shinawatras who had occupied downtown Bangkok for two months. More than 90 people were killed in the protests.
