Thailand’s Election Commission yesterday urged a delay in next week’s planned national vote, warning of more bloodshed after violent clashes over the weekend.
A delay would drag out a festering crisis that risks dividing the country. The military, which has often stepped in to take control in the past, is resolutely staying out of the fray this time, despite appeals from anti-government protesters.
“As election officials, it is our job to make sure elections are successful, but we also need to make sure the country is peaceful enough to hold the election,” commission member Somchai Srisutthiyakorn told reporters. “We don’t want it to be bloody.”
Photo: EPA
The commission will meet embattled Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra today to discuss the vote date.
With protests aimed at toppling Yingluck now in their third month, there has been speculation that the armed forces might try a repeat of the 18 successful and attempted coups they have mounted in 80 years of on-off democracy in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy.
However, in comments to reporters, Thai Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Thanasak Patimapakorn, refused to be drawn on whether polls should be postponed.
“The Election Commission and the government will meet to discuss this tomorrow. Soldiers will not be able to say much more than this,” he said.
However, the military has also refused to rule out intervention.
The commission has said that the months of protests render the country too unstable to go to the polls on Feb. 2.
That argument was bolstered by the shooting on Sunday in Bangkok of a protest leader, taking to 10 the death toll since the protests started in November last year.
The protests, centered on the capital, Bangkok, have broad support among the city’s middle class and the traditional elite.
They are pitted against the mostly rural — and much larger — voting block in the country’s north made up of so-called “Red Shirt” supporters of Yingluck and her brother, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was forced out of office by a military coup in 2006.
Thaksin lives in self-imposed exile to escape a 2008 jail sentence for corruption.
Red Shirt leaders have threatened to descend on the capital again if the military steps in. At least 90 people were killed in street fighting in Bangkok in 2010 between troops and the Red Shirts.
In their latest comments, neither the government nor the protesters showed any sign of backing down.
“We have to press ahead with the Feb. 2 election... A postponement would be futile and would only give independent organizations more time to target the government,” Thai Minister of the Interior Jarupong Ruangsuwan, who also leads the ruling Puea Thai Party, told reporters.
Yingluck called the Feb. 2 election in the hope of confirming her hold on power and would almost certainly win by a large margin.
Yet, protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a former Thai deputy prime minister, has rejected the election outright. In a speech to demonstrators on Sunday he appealed to the military to “protect innocent people who fight with their hands.”
Yesterday, he said his “Bangkok Shutdown” movement would not accede to government requests to free up access to ministries and state agencies that they have blockaded.
About 2.16 million people have registered for early polling in the country, out of 49 million voters.
Somchai said that a one-month delay may not be enough to resolve the deadlock, but waiting too long would leave the caretaker government unable to administer the country properly.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS