Thread: Yingluck gets down and dirty with a vegetable in her front garden..

Barred from discussing politics by the Thai junta, ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra opened up her Bangkok home on Friday to talk about her new passion: vegetables.

Yingluck, Thailand's first female premier, was removed from office by a court shortly before the May 2014 coup.

She has since been buffeted by travel restrictions, banned from politics and tangled up in a negligence case that carries a 10-year jail sentence.


Deposed Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra gives a tour of her vegetable garden to media in Bangkok on February 12, 2016. The press where refused access to the carrot patch.

That has limited to her to oblique references to the kingdom's decade-old political crisis and she now attempts to keep in the public eye through Facebook updates and increasingly frequent publicity stunts.

On Friday foreign media were invited for salad at her Bangkok compound where the smiling ex-premier gave a tour of her vegetable garden.

In a peculiarly Thai-style navigation of the curbs on her activities, she gently parried questions on politics in favour of urging her compatriots to eat more salad.

"I am very happy and proud of my salad garden," she told bemused reporters, before offering the assembled press pack take aways of homegrown .

But she did briefly touch on politics as she fondled a courgette, saying a new military-scripted constitution must be carefully considered before it goes to a referendum in July.

"You will have to live with this constitution. So please make sure it fits with Thailand. It must be people-centric," she said.

The kingdom has been torn by a decade-long struggle broadly between the Shinawatra family and their pro-democracy supporters, and the royalist Bangkok elite, which supports coups with its allies in the military and courts.

Despite her mounting woes, Yingluck remains a galvanising force among Shinawatra supporters and is still in Thailand -- unlike her older brother Thaksin, a billionaire former premier who lives in self-exile to avoid jail in the kingdom.

She faces charges of negligence over a multi-billion-dollar rice subsidy scheme which paid farmers up to twice the market rate for their crop.

Critics say the scheme cynically tapped state coffers to prop the Shinawatra's political base, incubated corruption and resulted in massive rice stockpiles.

Yingluck denies wrongdoing, insisting she was just trying to elevate the lot of the rural poor.



Ex-premier Yingluck takes Thai politics to the garden | Daily Mail Online

She's practising self sufficiency!

Why is the carrot patch verboten?...

Nice lettuce.

Enough playing with leaves, show some action with roots.

Isn't she looking radiant? I'd love to get down and dirty with her in my garden...

She could fondle my courgette while we sample my homegrown...

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Yingluck gets down and dirty with a vegetable in her front garden..

kneeling on a cucumber?

and this is news!!!!

As she's forbidden to talk about politics, denied the right to go overseas (invited by EU if I'm right), yes there's some kind of Media hype around her salads now, mushrooms a few months ago etc...

I can't say it reflects the people support for Yingluck and her party or it's a media thing ... if she can run for elections we might figure out (keeping in mind that the new voting mode may be designed to favour middle-sized party, weaks government - stemming from fragile alliances encouraging corruption err behind the scene deals - would be easier to controle )

^ A few wrinkles in time...

Top tips on how to take a hoe in hand and plough her furrow if she'll lettuce.

Yingluck gives me a chubby, absolute MILF,

The thing I would do to her lovely organic mushroom.... mmmmmm

Is this about Thai politics

My celery stick is hard and wholesome for her.

It's the carrots she favours...Off limits to the press...