Thai court bans PM, flights to resume

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/081202/afp/081202100747asiapacificnews.html

Tuesday December 2, 6:07 PM

Photo: AFP
BANGKOK (AFP) - A Thai court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his post and outlawed the ruling party on Tuesday, prompting jubilant anti-government 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 Constititional 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.

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"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 said.

Hours after the verdict, the PAD 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 Mueang 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 PAD member Somkiat Pongpaiboon told reporters at the airport.

Vudhihaandhu Vichairatama, chairman of the board of Airports of Thailand, said flights may be able to resume within 24 hours if there were no "technical problems".

"They're going to leave now," he told AFP-TV.

All equipment at the airport would have to be checked over before full airport operations could resume, he said.

The decision came hours after a grenade blast killed one PAD protester and wounded 22 others at Don Mueang. The PAD ended a three-month sit-in at the prime minister's office in Bangkok following similar attacks.

The PAD, who dress in yellow which they say symbolises 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 palace.

Thaksin, whose supporters dress in red, is hugely popular with Thailand's rural and urban poor, especially in the north, his native area.

Two of the PPP'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 PPP 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 spokesman Kudeb Saikrajang said.

The unrest has taken a heavy toll on travellers 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.

The turmoil also forced Thailand to postpone a summit of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN, which was due to be held in Chiang Mai in mid-December.