BANGKOK: Ousted Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra on Thursday attacked impeachment proceedings against her ahead of a crunch vote that could see her banned from politics for five years and deepen the country’s bitter divide.

Yingluck, the kingdom’s first female premier and the sister of former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, was toppled from office by a controversial court ruling shortly before the army staged a coup in May.

She faces impeachment on Friday by the junta-picked National Legislative Assembly over her administration’s populist rice subsidy programme, which funnelled cash to her rural base but cost billions of dollars and inspired protests that felled her government.

Yingluck arrived at heavily policed Parliament House in central Bangkok accompanied by a handful of her party members.

“There is no position to remove me from as the Constitutional Court has already removed me as prime minister,” she told assembly members, also saying she should not be impeached for violating a constitution that no longer exists under junta rule.

Yingluck robustly defended the rice scheme as an attempt to support Thailand’s rural poor, who historically receive a disproportionately small slice of government cash.

“I am not corrupt, I was never careless,” she said, rejecting accusations that had been levelled against her and urging members to consider her case with fairness and “without being guided by anyone”.

But a junta spokesman rejected Yingluck’s allegation that the impeachment process had no basis in law.

Published in Dawn, January 23rd, 2015

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