BANGKOK (AFP) – Thailand’s billionaire former prime minister (PM) Thaksin Shinawatra will return to the kingdom on August 10 after 15 years in self-exile, his daughter said yesterday.
The 74-year-old tycoon, twice elected premier but ousted by a military coup in 2006, has long spoken of his wish to come home, but faces multiple criminal charges – which he said are politically motivated.
Thaksin is a bogeyman for Thailand’s pro-military and royalist establishment and his return could inflame an already tense political situation.
The kingdom is in political deadlock after the military-dominated Senate blocked the head of the Move Forward Party (MFP) from becoming prime minister after the reformist party won May’s elections.
“I can’t believe what I am about to write. Dad is coming back on August 10 at Don Meung airport,” his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra wrote on her official Facebook page yesterday – Thaksin’s birthday.
Paetongtarn was a candidate to become PM for the Pheu Thai party, which came second in the election and is now trying to form a government after MFP was blocked.
“My heart and everyone in our family feel overwhelmed, happy and worried, but we respect dad’s decision,” she wrote.
