Former Thailand PM Yingluck Shinawatra impeached over rice policy Friday Jan 23,2015

 

Thailand's legislators have voted to impeach former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and ban her from politics for five years.

On Friday Jan 23,2015, 190 out of 219 lawmakers present in the military-backed National Legislative Assembly voted to impeach her. Eighteen voted against impeachment while the others abstained. One lawmaker was absent for the vote

Earlier the attorney general also announced that Ms Yingluck would face a criminal charge over her role in the scheme
Surasak Threerattrakul, director-general of the Office of the Attorney General, said after considering all the witnesses and evidence from the National Anti-Corruption Committee "we agree that the case substantiates a criminal indictment charge against Yingluck Shinawatra".

Yingluck Shinawatra also faces up to ten years in prison if she is found guilty of negligence of duty, which the attorney general charged her with on Friday morning

A court removed Yingluck Shinawatra as PM in May 2014, days before the military ousted her government in a coup

The allegations against Ms Yingluck centre around a scheme in which her government bought rice from Thai farmers at a much higher price than on the global market.
It resulted in the accumulation of huge stockpiles of rice and hit Thailand's rice exports hard.
Anti-corruption investigators have accused Ms Yingluck and her party of using the scheme to buy votes from farmers, particularly from their power base in the north, and allowing government associates to profit from it.
Ms Yingluck has maintained that she was not involved in the scheme's day-to-day operations, and has defended it as an attempt to support the rural poor. She has also said that she could not be impeached as she has not held a position in the government for months.