BANGKOK (Reuters) ? Thailand's government has put forward proposals for an amnesty for convicts that seem designed to allow self-exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra to return home without serving a sentence for abuse of power, Thai media reported on Wednesday.
The proposed amnesty was agreed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, media said. No mention was made of it in a statement after the meeting and ministers have declined to comment.
"Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was not present at the meeting and all officials were asked to leave the room when the issue was deliberated," the Bangkok Post daily said, citing sources at Government House, the prime minister's office.
Yingluck, prime minister since August, is Thaksin's sister and is widely seen as his proxy at the head of his Puea Thai Party.
Thaksin, a telecommunications tycoon-turned-populist politician, was ousted by the military in a coup in 2006 and remains a divisive figure in Thai politics.
His "red shirt" supporters paralyzed parts of Bangkok for weeks in early 2010 in an attempt to oust the previous government, before the military moved in to put down the protest movement.
Yingluck had little political experience before leading the party in the campaign for July's general election and from the start critics said she had been installed by Thaksin with the intention of finding a way for him to come home a free man.
The Bangkok Post said Yingluck was absent from the cabinet meeting apparently because transport complications caused her to spend Monday night in a flood-hit province she had visited during the day, although it quoted a military source as saying she could have come back to Bangkok by helicopter.
The cabinet proposals, which would be put to the king to be endorsed for an amnesty around his birthday on December 5, would cover people over 60 years of age sentenced to under three years in prison, the Post said.
Some eligibility criteria change from one amnesty to another, but those convicted of corruption, which would apply to Thaksin, or drug offences are normally not freed. The Post said the draft amnesty this time did not exclude corruption.
Amnesties also normally apply to convicts who are serving time in prison.
Thaksin, 62, was convicted of abuse of power in 2008 and fled before a two-year sentence was handed down. He never spent any time in jail.
He is based in Dubai. His Thai passport has been canceled but he is able to travel frequently on passports granted him by Montenegro and Nicaragua.
(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Jutarat Skulpichetrat; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Martin Petty and Robert Birsel)
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