Thailand’s military junta has charged ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra with official negligence over a rice subsidy plan.  The coup plotters already used this as the pretext to impeach the last democratically-elected leader of Thailand, and ban her from politics for five years.

If convicted, Yingluck faces as much as ten years in prison.  The junta is also calling for her to be held personally liable for the purported losses to state coffers.  Yingluck did not attend the hearing at the Supreme Court, which will rule on whether to pursue the case in a month’s time.

Prosecutors will say that Yingluck’s government bought rice from Thai farmers at a price above the market rate.  And since the rice farmers of the north make up a large part of the powerbase of Yingluck’s former ruling party, the junta claims the rice subsidy scheme amounts to funneling money to friends and political supporters.  Yingluck says the policy was simply aimed at helping farmers in the poor and underdeveloped north, and she had no day-to-day role in it.

Critics say this is just another step in the junta’s attempt to destroy the political movement of Yingluck and her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who also was removed by coup in 2006.  In fact, Thaksin-linked parties are so popular in the north and rural areas, that they’ve won every election since 2001 – something that has caused deep resentment among the Bangkok middle class and elites who used to look to those regions to provide their servants.