Deposed Thai PM Yingluck indicted; to face impeachment

“The commission considers there is enough evidence to indict (Yingluck) and refers (the case) to the Senate,” Panthep Klanarongran, chief of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) told reporters.  The case will now be voted on at the Senate. If impeached, Yingluck will be barred from politics for five years.

“The NACC had submitted letters to warn the defendant twice that the project would create problems and incur great losses, as well as allow corruption to take place throughout every step of the scheme,” Commissioner Vicha Mahakun told reporters.

“Yet the defendant did not consider suspending the project as soon as she learned about the country's great losses from running the project,” Mahakun said.  Both the rulings are a huge blow to the pro-government “Red Shirt” movement.

However, the anti-government People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) welcomed the developments with protesters who were demanding Yingluck's resignation organising a march through the main Sukhumvit road today.

Yingluck, Thailand's first woman premier, had been in office for two years, nine months and two days since her Pheu Thai Party won the 2011 election.

Her attempt through an amnesty bill to engineer a pardon for Thaksin, who was sentenced to prison, sparked a series of mass protests in Bangkok led by PDRC.  About 25 people have been killed and hundreds others wounded in political violence in six months of protests.