Embattled Thai PM to miss anti-graft hearing

BANGKOK, Feb 27 (AFP): Thailand's premier is set to skip an anti-corruption panel hearing Thursday into negligence charges that could lead to her removal from office, as she grapples with a four-month deadly political crisis.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is fighting for her political survival as pressure mounts on several fronts-in the streets, the courts and from the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
The backdrop is a long-standing struggle between a royalist establishment-backed by the judiciary and the military-and Yingluck's billionaire family which has strong support in the northern half of Thailand.
The prime minister's critics welcome the graft probe as a long-overdue attempt to hold the government to account, but to her supporters it is part of an attempted power grab.
Yingluck, who has protested her innocence, will not personally attend the appointment to acknowledge allegations linked to her government's flagship rice farm subsidy scheme, her office said.
"She assigned her lawyers to represent her," Yingluck's deputy secretary Thawat Boonfuang told AFP.
Yingluck flew to her political stronghold in northern Thailand on Wednesday where she is expected to spend several days inspecting government-backed projects.
She said last week that she was "willing to cooperate to establish the facts".
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), which filed charges against Yingluck earlier this month, says she ignored warnings that the rice scheme was fostering corruption and causing financial losses.
If found guilty she could face a five-year ban from politics.
It is unclear how long the commission will take to reach a conclusion.
If the panel decides that Yingluck is guilty, the case will be referred to the partially elected upper house of parliament for an impeachment vote.
The premier's opponents accuse the Shinawatra family of plundering the public coffers to win the votes of rural voters through populist policies such as the rice scheme.
But government supporters and some experts see the charges as part of an attempted "judicial coup" by Thaksin's foes within the royalist establishment without sending tanks onto the streets.
"These are elaborate plans to overthrow the government without actually staging a physical coup," said Verapat Pariyawong, a Harvard-educated lawyer and political commentator.
Dozens of pro-Yingluck lawmakers in the Senate, the upper house, face possible political bans over a failed attempt to amend the constitution to make the Senate fully elected.
Without a ruling party after protesters disrupted a February 2 election, a power vacuum could emerge, leaving the remaining unelected senators to appoint a new prime minister, according to legal experts.