Thai parties attempt to form coalition

Thailand’s rival political parties began battling today to cobble together a coalition government after parliamentary elections.

Loyalists of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra emerged victors but failed to gain an absolute majority.

The pro-Thaksin People’s Power Party won nearly half the seats in yesterday’s balloting in a striking rebuke to the generals who forced the billionaire populist from power in 2006.

The outcome appeared to be a recipe for continuing political instability.

With nearly all the vote counted, the People’s Power Party – established after Mr Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party was disbanded by court order earlier this year - had won 228 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament, according to the Election Commission. Complete results were due later today.

“I would like to call for all political parties to join us in forming a strong government,” PPP leader Samak Sundaravej said at a news conference. “I will certainly be the prime minister.”

He said Mr Thaksin, who was in Hong Kong, had telephoned to offer his congratulations.

The second-place Democrat Party took 166 seats, while Chart Thai captured 39.

Spokesman Kuthep Saikrajang said the PPP was eyeing Chart Thai and another smaller party as it tried to line up enough seats to form a government. Chart Thai declined to comment on the overture.

“If PPP cannot form a government, then it will be our turn,” Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejajjiva said outside his party’s headquarters in Bangkok today. “If it is clear that the PPP cannot put together a majority, obviously I am ready to lead a coalition.”

The PPP got most of its support from the rural north and northeast, where Mr Thaksin’s programmes, including universal health care and generous village development funds, won a hard-core following.

The Democrats ran strongest in Bangkok, where the 2006 movement to oust Mr Thaksin – who owns Manchester City football club – was centred.

Only seven of 39 competing parties won parliamentary seats. About 60 percent of 45 million eligible voters cast ballots for about 5,000 candidates.

If the PPP comes to power, said Nakarin Mektrairat, dean of Thammasat University’s Faculty of Political Science, “there will be tension and conflicts”, in part because of its lack of support from the capital’s residents.

Thai politics has been in almost constant turmoil since early 2006, when protests mushroomed demanding that Mr Thaksin step down, despite his party’s landslide victory a year earlier giving it an absolute parliamentary majority.

An April 2006 election was boycotted by the opposition and later declared invalid by the courts, leaving Mr Thaksin’s government in limbo until the September 19 coup last year.

But the military-appointed interim government that succeeded it proved weak and indecisive, failing to restore public confidence.

Mr Thaksin was abroad at the time of his removal, and has since lived in exile in the UK.

He is legally barred from office, his party has been dissolved by the courts, and he has been charged with a series of corruption-related crimes.

Despite vowing he has retired from politics, he has burnished his image from afar, using his Manchester City link to buy into football’s popularity in Thailand.

Thaksin’s PPP allies announced last week that he would return to Bangkok early next year, after a new government is installed. Mr Thaksin has not yet commented publicly on the election results.

Mr Samak said that, if possible, the PPP would grant amnesty to Mr Thaksin and 110 other executives of his now-disbanded Thai Rak Thai Party, who were barred from office for five years. “They didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

Despite its victory at the polls, the PPP could struggle to form a government.

The forces that helped unseat Mr Thaksin – the military, Bangkok’s educated middle class, and Thailand’s elite, including elements associated with the monarchy – have worked hard to erase Mr Thaksin’s political legacy.

They changed the constitution to limit the power of big parties and sought to demonise him as a corrupt destroyer of democracy. His return could undo their efforts and put their own positions in jeopardy.

The possibility of some election winners being disqualified was also likely to complicate the formation of a government.

Sodsri Sathayatham, a member of the Election Commission, said at least 24 could be disqualified while re-elections might be necessary in a dozen cases.

The commission, which will meet on Wednesday to begin investigations, was barraged by hundreds of complaints of vote-buying and other violations of electoral law.

Thailand’s long-term prospects for political stability seem poor.

Mr Samak, a veteran right-wing politician who has served in several Cabinets and as governor of Bangkok, has been a divisive figure for decades.

The blunt-speaking 72-year-old Samak “doesn’t have a conciliatory personality. He is aggressive and uncompromising”, said Narong Phetprasert, an economist at Chulalongkorn University.

Critics say Mr Abhisit, 43, British-born and educated at Eton and Oxford, may lack the toughness necessary to keep together a coalition of parties out to get the biggest share of power they can grab.

In Washington, the US State Department, which had criticised the coup against Mr Thaksin, said it welcomed reports that the polls were held in a free and fair manner and congratulated the Thai people “on taking this crucial step toward a return to elected government”.

Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US calls on all sides “to respect the results, and for a fair and transparent process for the adjudication of any disputes or fraud claims”.