The political future of embattled former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra will be determined today when the junta-appointed parliament votes on whether to impeach her, in a move that could reignite the country's bitter divisions.
A vote in favour of impeachment would see the kingdom's first female premier banned from politics for five years.
It also risks disturbing the uneasy calm that has descended on Thailand since the military coup last May.
Ms Yingluck, the sister of former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, was toppled from office by a controversial court ruling days before the army takeover.
Despite being forced out, she still faces impeachment by the military-stacked National Legislative Assembly over her administration's populist rice subsidy scheme.
The scheme funnelled cash to her rural base but cost billions of dollars and prompted violent protests that felled her government.
She is also facing the prospect of separate criminal charges over the programme, which purchased rice from farmers at around twice the market rate.
The policy has led to huge unsold stockpiles as regional competitors undercut Thailand's exports.
Experts say the impeachment move is the latest attempt by the country's royalist elite, and its army backers, to nullify the political influence of the Shinawatras, whose parties have won every election since 2001.
Both Mr Thaksin and Ms Yingluck are loathed by upper and many middle class Thais but still command huge loyalty from much of the rural poor, particularly in the Shinawatras' northern strongholds where rice farming is a mainstay of the local economy, in what is one of the world's largest rice exporters.
During the impeachment hearings Ms Yingluck defended the rice scheme as a necessary subsidy to help poor farmers who historically receive a disproportionately small slice of government cash.
She also attacked the legality of impeaching someone from a position that she had already been removed from.
A successful impeachment needs three-fifths of the 220-strong assembly to vote in favour.
Analysts say it is unlikely that the NLA, which is stacked with junta appointees, will save Ms Yingluck's political career.
A Yes vote also risks enraging her family's 'Red Shirt' supporters, who have laid low since the coup.
Prominent protest leaders from the movement have warned against supporters hitting the streets given that public gatherings are currently banned under martial law.
A refusal by the NLA to impeach Ms Yingluck could mobilise the same upper and middle class Thais who led the protests that eventually toppled her government.
Junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha has warned against any faction hitting the streets.
Since Mr Thaksin swept to power in 2001, Shinawatra governments have been floored by two coups and bloodied by the removal of three other premiers by the kingdom's interventionist courts.
