Yingluck's trial seen denting dominance of Shinawatra clan

Bangkok

THAILAND'S first female prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra faces court on Tuesday at the start of a negligence trial which could see her jailed for a decade and deliver a hammer blow to the political dominance of her family.

It is the latest legal move against Ms Yingluck - sister of fugitive billionaire ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra - whose administration was toppled in a military coup nearly a year ago.

She is accused of criminal negligence over a populist but economically disastrous rice subsidy scheme, which paid farmers in the rural Shinawatra heartland twice the market rate for their crops.

Ms Yingluck is not accused of corruption but of failing to prevent alleged graft within the programme, which cost billions of dollars and galvanised the protests that eventually felled her elected government leading to last May's coup. Thailand's military-appointed Parliament impeached Ms Yingluck in January over the scheme, a move which banned her from politics for five years. But the criminal case could see her jailed for up to a decade, an outcome that could ruin any c…