POLITICAL WRANGLING to resolve Thailand’s deepening political crisis continued yesterday.
A meeting of allies close to exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra took place to discuss an attempt by the main opposition party to form a new government which it claims will lead Thailand out of chaos.
Bangkok’s two main commercial airports were up and running after a week-long siege by protesters, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers and badly affecting the crucial tourism industry.
The protesters regard the government as a proxy for Mr Thaksin.
Mr Thaksin is still popular among the rural masses, reflecting the deep divide between the urban elite and the country’s poor, presenting a possible civil war scenario.
Mr Thaksin’s ex-wife Khunying Potjaman made a surprise entrance on Friday, ostensibly to visit her ailing mother but more likely to lobby support for her ex-husband’s allies.
The couple divorced last month after 42 years, possibly to protect the couple’s assets, which are mostly held in Ms Potjaman’s name.
Her arrival is the latest bizarre twist in Thailand’s three-year-old political crisis, which has seen Bangkok’s royal and military elites take on Mr Thaksin, ousted in a 2006 coup, and his allies in the current government.
The opposition Democrat Party said at the weekend that it had secured 260 lawmakers in the lower house, enough to form a government with its British-born, Oxford-educated party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva as the new prime minister.
The lower house has 400 members from single-constituency elections and 80 party-list members.
Presently, 441 seats are occupied, with the remaining vacant, which means a coalition needs 221 to form a government.
The move by the Democrats came after the government was dissolved by court order as a consequence of electoral fraud, and key members were banned from politics for five years.
In an increasingly farcical game of musical chairs involving parties dissolving and reforming under different names, members of ousted prime minister Somchai Wongsawat’s People Power Party regrouped into a new one, the Phuea Thai Party.
Phuea Thai selected Yongyuth Wichaidit, a former senior interior ministry official, to head its ranks and take on the Democrats for the job of prime minister.
Phuea Thai says it has the backing of at least 226 members.
The airport occupation was conducted by the yellow-shirted anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy, who have threatened more unrest if Mr Thaksin’s allies are restored to power.
They support the Democrat Party, even though it has distanced itself from the protests.
However, if the Democrats take over it would anger the “red shirts” loyal to Mr Thaksin.
Central to the Democrats securing a majority is the agreement of the influential Friends of Newin faction from the northeast, which might alter the political balance in the country.
Parliament meets within the next 30 days, when the two coalitions will have to prove their majority.
No date has been set for the assembly.