Thai court bans PM; protesters allow flights

12/03/2008

BANGKOK — A Thai court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his post and outlawed the ruling party Tuesday, prompting jubilant anti-government protesters to lift a blockade of Bangkok’s main airport.

With the new development in the more than a week-long siege by protesters of two airports in Thailand, several countries rushed to have their nationals stranded in the Southeast Asian nation airlifted by their flag carriers, including the Philippines.

Leaders of the administration party in Bangkok quickly vowed to form another government under a new banner but without Somchai, who was barred from politics five years by the Constitutional 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 cons-titution 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.

“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 other blockade by another group of protesters 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.”

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 symbolizes 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, party spokesman Kudeb Saikrajang said.

The unrest has taken a heavy toll on travelers 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 middle of this month.

In Manila, the government’s Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) yesterday said a fourth emergency flight was scheduled to leave tonight to fetch 180 other stranded Filipinos in Thailand.

As earlier announced, a reserved flight of the Cebu Pacific airline would leave at about 9 p.m. for the four-hour mercy mission to Utapao air base, near Bangkok.

DFA spokesman Claro Cristobal said the Philippine embassy in Bangkok will arrange for buses to take the passengers out of their respective hotels for the land trip to the military base.

Meanwhile, Some 500 tired but relieved Filipinos returned home from Thailand early yesterday on two government-chartered flights after being stranded by anti-government protests that closed airports in Bangkok.

A Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) official said another batch of Filipinos airlifted from Bangkok are set to arrive aboard a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight early this morning, including Sen. Jamby Madrigal who was stuck in Thailand after arriving in the country last Nov. 26 to reportedly attend an environmental conference in Pattaya, Thailand.

The MIAA-Public Affairs Office received a request for VIP accommodation from the office of Madrigal to allow two of her aides to meet her at the presidential lounge of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport 1.

PAL spokesman Rolando Estabillo said a bigger aircraft, an Airbus A330 will be used to fetch the new batch of returning Filipinos instead of the Airbus A320, which has a capacity of only 156 passengers.

Estabilo said the outgoing flight will be carrying at least 70 passengers to Bangkok.

“The flight is some sort of mercy flight for stranded Filipinos. OFWS (overseas Filipino workers) will be allowed (to board the plane) if they do not have any money to pay (fare),” he added.

Cristobal said so far, 760 Filipinos that were stranded in Thailand have been repatriated. AFP, PNA and Conrado Ching

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