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Thai Prime Minister Wins Election While Opposition Refuses to Race

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Thomas Fuller New York Times News Service

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The party of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra won a landslide victory in Thailand's national election on Sunday, early results showed, in voting marred by the refusal of the main opposition parties to participate.

With candidates from the governing party unopposed in 278 of 400 constituencies for the lower house of parliament, or nearly 70 percent, Thaksin's majority is expected to be overwhelming, but the outcome is unlikely to resolve the political impasse that has gripped the country for two months.

"I want everyone to respect the people's decision, whatever the outcome," Thaksin said Sunday as he arrived at his party's headquarters.

The only challengers Sunday were candidates from minor parties like the Thai Development Party, virtually unknown and with little chance of winning seats.

As a result, Thailand, which has a history of fractious politics, could now be governed by one unchecked party.

Another 100 seats in the lower house are chosen from party lists, and the upper house election is scheduled for this month.

Gothom Arya, a former election commissioner, said in an interview on Sunday that at least one special election would be necessary, in a district where all candidates had been disqualified, but that it was a "foregone conclusion" that Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party, which means Thais love Thais, would fill most seats.

The election, one of the most unusual in recent Southeast Asian history, was complicated by a litany of problems. The election commission announced candidate disqualifications as late as Sunday. Three bombs were detonated near polls in the restive south, wounding several people. Opposition politicians complained of vote buying, and P-NET, the People's Network for Elections in Thailand, an unofficial election watchdog group, said election commission officers could see inside voting booths.

Leaders from the three main opposition parties, who urged their supporters to check the "abstain" box on their ballots, predicted that many governing party candidates would not be able to take office because electoral law requires unopposed candidates to have the votes of at least 20 percent of eligible voters.

The Thai news media reported that the turnout appeared to be 60 percent to 70 percent nationwide, lower than the 73 percent turnout for elections last year, but it was too early to tell how many candidates reached the 20 percent threshold of support.

One opposition group said Sunday that it would resume its demonstrations, which began two months ago, after Thaksin sold business interests to the government of Singapore. Opponents accuse him of accumulating too much power and using it to promote his businesses.

But there were signs on Sunday that the police and the army, each with considerable power in Thailand, were losing patience with the demonstrations.

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

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