Thai interim PM hopes to hold election soon

Bangkok

THAILAND's interim prime minister yesterday expressed hope that February's annulled general election could be re-run soon, and said that anti-government protesters would not succeed in getting the Senate to impose an alternative premier.

Ousted prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra's caretaker government has remained in office since the Constitutional Court ordered her and nine ministers to step down last week in a nepotism case.

That followed six months of political turmoil in Bangkok, the latest phase of a nearly decade-long struggle between former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Ms Yingluck's brother who was overthrown by the army in 2006, and the royalist establishment.

Before being forced out, Ms Yingluck had agreed with the Election Commission to hold an election on July 20, although the date has not been ratified by the king.

Caretaker Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan told foreign media that the government would meet the commission tomorrow to decide the best date. "Hopefully, we will have an election soon but it may slip, depending on the meeting," he said. "I can't guarantee the election will be successful, but I have high hopes."

The protesters want a "neutral" prime minister to oversee electoral reforms aimed at keeping the Shinawatras out of power, and have said that they will scupper any vote that takes place before those changes are brought in.

But Mr Niwatthamrong, who served as deputy prime minister and commerce minister under Ms Yingluck and was previously a senior executive in one of Thaksin's companies, said that the election should take place first. "We cannot stop the election, that is against the law," he said. "We can have elections first and then reforms."

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime minister in a government run by the pro-establishment Democrat Party, has called on the upper house Senate, the judiciary and Election Commission to step in and appoint a new prime minister.

Mr Niwatthamrong said that would not happen. "There are a lot of steps they have to do first. They can try but I don't believe they will be successful," he said.

The military, which has intervened frequently in politics in the past, has stayed out this time despite calls from some pro-establishment forces for it to oust the pro-Thaksin government. "Military heads have never mentioned a neutral prime minister, and this is not something they plan to get involved in," Winthai Suvaree, a spokesman for the army, told Reuters. "The military is not planning to stage a coup, and it will let politicians sort the country's problems out."

Rival supporters are staging sit-in protests at various places in and on the outskirts of Bangkok, raising fears of violence. Twenty-five people have been killed in sporadic violence since this round of protests kicked off in November. Reuters