Thailand was on edge yesterday on the eve of a vote for a new prime minister, with the opposition party still confident of a win despite a last-minute intervention by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Billionaire Thaksin, toppled in a 2006 military coup, weighed in from exile late on Saturday, accusing the army of interfering in politics.
Members of parliament (MPs) will choose Thailand’s third prime minister in four months today, with opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva on the verge of the winning after the pro-Thaksin government was brought down by court order and hit by defections.
Abhisit’s Democrat Party and Thaksin’s allies were engaged in fierce last-minute lobbying to win over a handful of undecided .
“The more [Thaksin] talks, it makes MPs feel uncomfortable. This is not about betrayal — it is about a decision for the nation,” Democrat Secretary-General Suthep Tuagsuban said. “I am confident that Abhisit will receive more than half of the parliamentarians’ votes and can form the government.”
Thaksin gave a pre-recorded video address shown at a Bangkok stadium to about 50,000 supporters bedecked in bright red, saying there would be no end to Thailand’s political strife if the generals keep meddling.
“At the moment the army is interfering ... Those people who interfere in forming the government must stop and withdraw,” he said.
Thaksin, who is living in an undisclosed foreign location to dodge graft charges, said the military was behind the defection of former ruling coalition lawmakers who have now backed the British-born Abhisit.
Army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd yesterday denied that the military had a hand in the political horse-trading, as parties jostle to fill the power vacuum left by the dissolution of the People Power Party (PPP).
“We are not interfering in politics. We say only that it is parliament’s duty and whatever the decision is, they should think about the nation first and foremost,” he told reporters.
Police say they will have about 1,200 officers on duty outside parliament for the special session today in case of protests by Thaksin supporters. They say the army will be called in if there are any clashes.
The political maneuvers follow six months of protests by the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which peaked with a week-long blockade of Bangkok’s airports beginning late last month.
The turmoil left 350,000 passengers stranded and badly hurt Thailand’s economy, with GDP growth forecast at 2 percent next year.
The PAD ended the airport siege after a court on Dec. 2 dissolved the PPP and handed a five-year political ban to then-prime minister Somchai Wongsawat, who is Thaksin’s brother-in-law.
Thaksin’s allies have regrouped in the newly formed Puea Thai (For Thais) party and insist that they can still form a government when the members of parliament vote.
“The race will be very neck and neck — we will win by eight or 10 votes,” said Chalerm Yoobamrung, a Puea Thai member who was health minister under the PPP-led government.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS