| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| Thai govt dissolved |
| 2008-12-03 |
| Court strips PM of his post for vote fraud, outlaws ruling party; airport to reopen A Thai court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his post and outlawed the ruling party yesterday, prompting jubilant anti-government protesters to lift a blockade of Bangkok's main airport. Party leaders quickly vowed to form another government under a new banner, but without Somchai, who was barred from politics five years by the Constitutional Court in a vote fraud case. The move was welcomed by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which occupied Suvarnabhumi airport a week ago to cap a months-long campaign to oust Somchai, the brother-in-law of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. "My duty is over. I am now an ordinary citizen," Somchai, 61, told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai from where he has been governing since the blockade began. Under a military constitution adopted after a 2006 coup against then-premier Thaksin, any political party in which a single executive is convicted of vote fraud must be dissolved and all executives banned. Somchai, a former lawyer, spent less than three months in power, beset by the royalist protesters who accused his government of acting as a proxy for their nemesis Thaksin and of being hostile to the monarchy. "As the court decided to dissolve the People Power Party (PPP), therefore the leader of the party and party executives must be banned from politics for five years," said Chat Chonlaworn, head of the nine-judge court panel. "The court had no other option," he said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |