Appears to me that all these surface rhetorical calculations were a pre-planned show for media, the public sphere and particular political circles. The hospital stays, supposed illness and surgeries, protected custody, two official sentence commutes which led to a partial pardon which will lead to the expected full amnesty before one can blink again.
You don't have to be too much of a genius to understand all this and the arrangement agreed upon long before he reset foot upon Thai soil. Expecting the less than vulnerable Yingluck to follow suit before the year is out.
It is what it is. Let's get over everything Shinawatra.......get back to our lives and much more important issues.