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By Charlie Mcdonald-Gibson, Agence France-Presse
BANGKOK: Thailand’s voters have delivered a
stunning rebuke to the generals who have ruled the kingdom with such
an unsteady hand since ousting Thaksin Shinawatra 15 months ago,
analysts say.
With 93 percent of the ballots counted after
Sunday’s election, allies of former premier Thaksin in the People
Power Party (PPP) appear to have snatched a victory, winning 228 of
the 480 parliamentary seats.
The Democrat Party, who received every advantage
at the polls from the royalist generals, have come second with 166
seats, early results show.
PPP fell short of an absolute majority, and the
Democrats could still cobble together a coalition with the smaller
parties who shared the rest of the votes, but analysts say the
message to the junta is unmistakable.
“It is a very clear snub of the
coup-makers,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at
Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
“In hindsight, taking power by force was the
easiest part,” he told Agence France-Presse, referring to the
September 2006 putsch that overthrew Thaksin.
“Since then, if you look at the interim
government ... the policy performance was very murky, so they did
not meet expectations.”
Thaksin’s influence has also failed to wane
across the electorate, despite the best efforts of the junta to
obliterate him from the political landscape, banning him from
politics and pursuing him with graft allegations.
The charismatic billionaire-turned-politician
has been living in Britain since the coup, but has stayed in the
headlines with his purchase of Manchester City football club and the
occasional well-timed attack against the junta.
“He has been canny ever since the coup,
especially maintaining himself in the public eye with various
interviews,” said Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political analyst and
author of book about the Thai coup.
“He just has basically been sitting tight, and
the junta has been shooting themselves in the foot,” he added.
So far, none of the military’s corruption
cases against Thaksin have made it through the courts, while the
government they installed made a number of economic missteps and
failed to quell a separatist insurgency in the south.
In May, a junta-appointed tribunal dissolved
Thakain’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party, apparently paving the way for
a Democrat Party election victory.
But ex-TRT members regrouped and rose from the
ashes as PPP, led with Thaksin’s backing by former Bangkok
governor Samak Sundaravej, who late Sunday proclaimed that he
would be Thailand’s next prime minister.
Now the political horse-trading begins, with PPP
wooing the smaller parties to try and get the numbers needed to
dominate parliament with authority.
The Democrats will be pulling the minor players
in the other direction, possibly with the help of the military.
“I think there will be a push from behind the
scenes ... for a non-PPP coalition,” Thitinan said.
He predicted an “unstable, unwieldy”
coalition government, which would continue to reflect the
polarization of Thailand, with the rural northeast at odds with the
more prosperous Bangkok and central regions.
Samak has repeatedly said he will bring Thaksin
back from exile if he forms the government, hinting at an amnesty
for the former prime minister and other TRT senior officials who
were banned from politics.
But analysts warn of more instability to come,
and said that Bangkok’s middle class and other groups linked to
the influential royal palace would not take kindly to a blustering
return of Thaksin.
“If he comes back soon, the confrontation will
occur very soon again,” said Ukrist Pathmanand, a politics
professor at Chulalongkorn University, who predicted that street
protests could greet Thaksin.
“If there is a coalition government there is
instability, but instability within the parliamentary process,” he
said.
“But if you decide to bring back Khun Thaksin
and another group of Thai Rak Thai party, there will be less
stability.”
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