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BANGKOK: A Thai court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of
his post and outlawed the ruling party on Tuesday, prompting
jubilant antigovernment 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 added.
Resuming flights
Hours after the verdict, the People’s Alliance
for Democracy and airport authorities said they had reached an
agreement to resume flights from Suvarnabhumi, although there was no
mention of the blockade at the older Don Muang domestic airport.
The airport seizure has stranded 350,000
passengers and caused massive economic losses to the kingdom.
“As of this moment, the PAD has allowed
flights to take off and land immediately, both passenger and cargo
flights,” senior alliance member Somkiat Pongpaiboon told
reporters at the airport.
Vudhihaandhu Vichairatama, chairman of the board
of Airports of Thailand, said flights might be able to resume within
24 hours if there were no “technical problems.”
“They’re going to leave now,” he told
Agence France-Presse television.
All equipment at the airport would have to be
checked over before full airport operations could resume,
Vudhihaandhu said.
The decision came hours after a grenade blast
killed one alliance protester and wounded 22 others at Don Muang.
The protesters ended a three-month sit-in at the prime minister’s
office in Bangkok following similar attacks.
Alliance members, who dress in yellow which they
say symbolizes their devotion to Thailand’s much-revered king, are
backed by the Bangkok business elite and middle classes, along with
elements in the military and the government.
Thaksin, whose supporters dress in red, is
hugely popular with Thailand’s rural and urban poor, especially in
the north, his native area.
Vowing comeback
Two of the People Power Party’s coalition
partners were also dissolved because some of their executives were
convicted of vote fraud after elections in December 2007—the first
since the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin.
But all six parties in the coalition vowed to
make a comeback.
The party was ready to move lawmakers into a
shell party called Pheu Thai (for Thais) formed in anticipation of
the verdict and continue administering the country, spokesman Kudeb
Saikrajang said.
The unrest has taken a heavy toll on travelers
stranded in Thailand by the crisis, with two Canadians and a
Dutchman dying in road accidents as they tried to flee the “Land
of Smiles.”
Airline passengers have been flooding to a naval
base southeast of Bangkok and to the southern tourist town of Phuket
to try to escape the country, along often-dangerous roads.
Asean postponed
The turmoil also forced Thailand to postpone a
summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation Nations (Asean)
that was to be held in Chiang Mai in mid-December.
Asean groups Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos,
Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
-- AFP
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