Thailand to hold elections before June: deputy PM

Thursday 17 February 2011
(AFP)

BANGKOK - Thailand will hold a general election before June, the deputy prime minister said Thursday, setting the stage for a fierce poll battle in the politically divided nation.

"I guarantee that it will happen before June," Suthep Thaugsuban told reporters when asked about the timing of the keenly awaited vote.

His comments followed the passing of a mid-year budget and recent constitutional amendments that the government had set as prerequisites for an early election, along with peaceful conditions for the polls.

Mass protests in April and May of last year by the "Red Shirt" opposition movement -- which was seeking immediate elections -- left more than 90 people dead in street clashes between demonstrators and armed soldiers.

Abhisit said last week an election would be held in the first half of this year if there was no fresh violence.

The British-born, Oxford-educated head of the establishment Democrat Party must call a vote by the end of this year, when his term finishes.

But Abhisit has said there is no need for him to complete his current term.

At the height of the Red Shirt crisis, the premier had proposed to hold a poll in November 2010 to resolve the standoff, but he shelved the plan because demonstrators refused to disperse until the army moved in.

In the months after the military broke up the rally, the capital was rattled by a string of minor explosions while it was under emergency rule.

The Reds, who are broadly loyal to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, have held a series of peaceful one-day rallies in the capital in recent weeks.

The Red Shirts view Abhisit's government as undemocratic because it came to power in a 2008 parliamentary vote with the backing of the army after a court ruling threw out the previous administration.

The cabinet recently agreed to invoke the Internal Security Act in Bangkok to cope with renewed political rallies in the capital.

"Yellow Shirt" nationalist activists -- rivals of the Reds -- have been rallying near Government House recently in protest at Abhisit's handling of a deadly border dispute with Cambodia.