Thai Prime Minister Will Step Down
Thailand's embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Tuesday said he will step down from office, bowing to a mounting opposition campaign seeking his ouster over allegations of corruption and abuse of power.
His announcement comes shortly after Thaksin met with the country's revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, at his seaside palace in southern Hua Hin.
"I am sorry that I will not accept the premier post," Thaksin said during a televised speech. He added he would remain as caretaker head of government until he is replaced.
Just a day earlier, he had said he would remain in office, since his party had won 16 million votes — enough for a victory but down from the sweeping mandate of 19 million votes his party received last year.
Nonetheless, even then, he acknowledged the strong protest vote and said he would set up a neutral committee to decide his political future. He said the committee would comprise three former prime ministers, three former supreme court chiefs and three former heads of Parliament to judge whether he should resign.
"We have no time to quarrel," he said Tuesday. "I want to see Thai people unite and forget what has happened."
Thaksin said he would remain in a caretaker role until a successor is chosen, adding that his replacement would be elected once parliament resumes within the next 30 days.
The announcement comes as opposition forces were gearing to resume their anti-government protests and early election results showed his popularity had plummeted.
Thaksin won 57 percent of Sunday's ballot, according to preliminary results, but scores of voters abstained, including a majority in the capital, Bangkok.
Thaksin's critics — who for two months have been staging rallies drawing as many as 100,000 people — rejected the prime minister's idea of a reconciliation committee as insincere and called for new anti-government protests this week.
With more than 70 percent of the vote counted in all but two Bangkok districts, abstentions outnumbered votes for Thai Rak Thai — Thaksin's party — in 27 of the capital's 36 constituencies, The Nation newspaper reported on its Web site, citing the Election Commission. In elections last year, Thaksin's party swept the capital.
Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, of the election watchdog People's Network for Election, estimated that up to 40 percent of votes cast Sunday were abstentions, compared with about 1 percent in last year's election.
The "Vote for No Vote" campaign also appeared to have had strong support in southern Thailand, which historically favors the main opposition Democrat Party.
Early returns showed Thaksin was clearly popular in the north — his home area — and the northeast, where Thailand's rural majority has benefited from his administration's generous social welfare and economic assistance programs.
Because of the boycott, Thai Rak Thai could be the only party to hold seats in the new legislature. Candidates from obscure parties with no lawmakers in Parliament ran in the remaining constituencies, and there was no indication that any had enough votes to claim a seat.
However, political analysts predict that some ruling party candidates, particularly in Bangkok and the south, will not be able to take office because of minimum vote requirement laws.
Election law stipulates that uncontested candidates must win the support of at least 20 percent of registered voters — highly unlikely in some districts. Any seats left unfilled could lead to several more rounds of voting in those districts before a prime minister can be chosen.
The opposition hopes the boycott will make it impossible to fill all 500 legislative seats, which many legal experts say could make it impossible to convene Parliament and form a new government under the Thai constitution.
"There are a lot of people who voted 'No Vote' this time," Abhisit Vejjajiva, head of the Democrat Party, said. "It shows that most people think this election is not the answer to the problem right now. And that's the reason the Democrat Party didn't join the election in the first place."