Thai Premier Wins Election, but Crisis Only Worsens

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 3, 2006

BANGKOK, April 2 -- Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was reelected easily Sunday in a contest boycotted by Thailand's main opposition parties, but he failed to break a political deadlock that has provoked weeks of mass protests demanding his ouster for alleged misconduct.

Early returns showed that a new parliament may not be able to convene under Thai law because some seats remain unfilled, further aggravating the three-month-old crisis.

The heightened uncertainty comes as Thaksin's foes have vowed to intensify their demonstrations later this week. Opponents accuse him of weakening the country's democratic institutions and, in particular, improperly enriching himself when his family agreed in January to sell its telecommunications empire to a Singapore company for $1.9 billion.

Though initial returns showed Thaksin's party, Thais Love Thais, headed toward a commanding majority, large numbers of people in Bangkok registered their discontent with the prime minister by signifying on their ballots that they were abstaining.

Dozens of seats could remain vacant in uncontested districts around the country where the candidate fails to reach the required 20 percent threshold of eligible voters. The prime minister's party is running unopposed for more than half the parliament's 500 seats, according to the national election commission.

Thai legal experts said new elections must take place in the coming weeks to fill the vacancies because a government cannot be formed under Thai law unless parliament has a complete complement of members.

After casting his ballot in western Bangkok, Thaksin told reporters, "This election is very important for the direction of the country because there is a split right now." He appeared relaxed but later in the evening called off a scheduled news conference, saying he wanted to wait for the results to become clear. Election officials say they expect vote-counting to be finished Monday.

Even before the ballots were tallied, retired Maj. Gen. Chamlong Srimuang, a protest leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy, dismissed the outcome.

"The problem is that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has no legitimacy to rule, so PAD will go on rallying until Thaksin resigns and Thailand gets a royally appointed prime minister," Chamlong said in comments reported by the Nation newspaper's online edition.

The protest movement plans to file suit Monday to annul the outcome of the vote and seek an injunction to prevent endorsement of the results by the election commission, according to an alliance spokesman.

"We are in for a long haul," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Chulalongkom University.

He said Thaksin could ease tensions if he took advantage of the comfortable victory to make a dignified exit, perhaps by turning power over to a deputy. "But if it leads Thaksin to become more emboldened and renew his term, it will make the crisis worse," Thitinan continued. "If he somehow opens parliament, we will have a downward spiral in confrontation on the street."

Several clashes already broke out last week between Thaksin's supporters and detractors, raising the prospect that the military or Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej could intervene to name a new interim government and restore calm.

Although Thailand's military has a long history of coups, senior officers have said they plan to remain on the sidelines.

Thaksin's challengers are divided over whether the king should press the prime minister to resign, with skeptics warning that this could undermine the country's democracy.

But if the protests provoke bloodshed -- so far the only fatality was reportedly from the heat -- many politicians say they expect the king would signal that it is time for the military to move in. The prime minister himself could also declare emergency rule in response to mounting unrest.

Election observers have warned that violence could erupt if provinces traditionally opposed to Thaksin respond angrily to the election of pro-government candidates from their districts.

Once the most popular elected prime minister in his country's history, Thaksin, 56, called the elections three years early in a bid to defuse a crisis that has repeatedly drawn tens of thousands of protesters into the streets and parks of the capital.

But opposition parties announced they would boycott the election on the grounds it would lend Thaksin undeserved legitimacy. "What we did when we took the position was to make a statement, and we made a statement," Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of the opposition Democrat Party, told reporters.

As the election approached, the prime minister sought to win over foes by offering them cabinet positions and pledging to undertake political reforms. He also promised to step down if he failed to gain half the vote.

His opponents balked. Some opposition leaders urged Thais to go to the polls but vote to abstain.

Election returns reflected the deep rift that has opened between Bangkok and Thailand's rural hinterlands to the north and east.

In the capital, where many intellectuals and middle-class Thais object to what they call Thaksin's autocratic rule, early results showed abstentions outrunning votes for the prime minister.

But the initial results also indicated he still enjoys broad support in the countryside, where villagers are grateful for his populist policies including subsidized health care, village investment funds and rural debt restructuring.

Shortly after the polls closed Sunday, small bombs exploded outside at least two election stations in the southern province of Narathiwat, where Muslim insurgents have been waging a two-year uprising. Several security officers were wounded, police said. Earlier in the day, police defused another bomb in neighboring Pattani province.

Despite underlying anxiety in the capital, Bangkok was unusually quiet on a sunny election day. The campaign posters and billboards that plastered roadsides before previous elections were largely missing and the mass demonstrations of recent weeks were suspended shortly before the weekend.

At a voting station in Bangkok's Mater Dei Institute, a steady stream of voters filed beneath the basketball hoops of the school's gymnasium to cast their ballots. Voters said most of the people in this affluent downtown district had abstained.

"People here don't like Thaksin. Most prefer other parties," said Pear Pongsachareonnont, 25, a soft-spoken doctor.

"After the election, Thaksin will remain the same," she continued, "but people's opposition to him will grow stronger because people will still refuse to accept him."

Just outside the school's parking lot, where voters arrived in Mercedes, BMWs and SUVs, Suriya Suwannasoya, 35, had a different opinion. Clad in the orange vest of a motorcycle taxi driver and cradling his helmet in his arms, he said he remained loyal to Thaksin, as does nearly everyone in his home town in Thailand's rural northeast. Suriya said he felt so strongly that he had arranged to vote ahead of time rather than risk missing the chance because of work.

"The election will not end the political crisis," Suriya said as a young woman took a seat on his motorbike. "Maybe if there's a new prime minister, the situation will calm down, but I still think Thaksin should stay."