BANGKOK, July 8 (AFP) - Thailand's defeated Democrats have launched a legal bid to ban the victorious party of fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, threatening fresh political turmoil.
The Democrat Party asked the Election Commission (EC) to recommend the abolition of Puea Thai, the winner of Sunday's election, on the grounds that disqualified politicians were involved in its campaign.
“We asked EC to recommend to the Constitutional Court to dissolve Puea Thai,” Wiratana Kalayasiri, head of the Democrats' legal team, told AFP.
“The accusation is that Puea Thai allowed people subject to five-year political bans to become involved in policy planning, phone-ins and video addresses and also the selection of candidates,” he said. A Democrat member has also lodged a complaint against premier-in-waiting Yingluck Shinawatra — Thaksin's youngest sister — accusing her of giving away free noodles during campaigning in an attempt to buy votes.
The legal process is expected to take some time and is not expected to prevent Yingluck from becoming Thailand's first female prime minister.
But any attempt to remove her party from power would be sure to anger Thaksin's “Red Shirt” supporters, who were behind mass protests in Bangkok last year that turned deadly.
“If this case proceeds it will be enormously damaging for efforts for reconciliation because it will underline the feeling that the Democrats and their allies in the military and the palace and the judiciary simply don't accept election results,” said Thailand expert Andrew Walker.
“This is an invitation to the most hardline, radical and violent elements in the Red Shirts to do their stuff. To subvert this result would be an invitation to mayhem,” said Walker, a senior fellow at Australian National University.
The Thai judiciary has a record of intervening in politics. Two Thaksin parties have been dissolved by the courts in the past and their top executives, including the controversial former leader, were banned from politics. |
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