Bangkok - Thailand's current government received a boost
from a by-election held over the weekend that has added 20 seats to a
Democrat-led coalition compared with nine for the opposition,
unofficial results showed Monday.
Coalition partners have won 20 of the 29 contested seats, leaving
the two opposition parties - Puea Thai and Pracharaj with nine,
according to the Election Commission's unofficial tally Monday.
Thais on Sunday voted in a by-election in 22 provinces and for a
new governor in Bangkok.
The Democrat Party, which leads the current coalition, won seven
seats in the by-election and Sukhumbhand Paribata, their candidate in
Bangkok's gubernatorial race, claimed victory with more than 900,000
votes in the capital, or nearly 45 per cent of the total, compared
with about 600,000 votes for his closest rival, Yuranan Pamornmontri,
representing the Puea Thai opposition party.
The outcome of both elections has strengthened the Democrat Party
and their coalition, which was patched together last month after the
collapse of the previous government.
After the polls, the coalition is expected to hold about 260 of
the 480 seats in the lower house, deemed a fairly stable majority in
Thailand's crisis-prone parliamentary system.
The main question is what the Democrats will do with their
stronger mandate to rule, analysts said.
'My guess is that they won't do very much,' quipped Chris Baker,
a political commentator who has co-authored several books on Thai
politics and the kingdom's history. 'The only real problem they have
now is the economy, and they've got very few resources to deal with
it,' he said.
Thailand faces huge economic challenges in 2009, when its
export-led economy is expected to be hard hit by falling orders in
the US, Europe and Japan as a result of financial crisis and
recession in those crucial markets.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of the
Democrats, has launched a 300-billion-baht (8.6-billion-dollar)
stimulus plan this year to boost employment and assure decent prices
on agricultural products for Thai farmers, but the budget is deemed
insufficient to deal with a steep rise in unemployment and falling
incomes from exports.
The Democrats, who came in second in the December 23, 2007, polls
and squeaked in to power only after the former coalition government
leader - the People Power Party - was dissolved by a Constitution
Court ruling last month, have consistently failed to win the support
of Thailand's north-eastern provinces, which comprise about half the
voting population.
The impoverished North-East has been a political bastion for
former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire businessman
whose populist policies won him two elections between 2001 to 2006.
Thaksin was toppled by a coup in September, 2006, but has remained
a powerful behind-the-scenes player in Thai politics for the past two
years.
Thailand's past two coalition governments of 2008 were both headed
by Thaksin cronies - first prime minister Samak Sundaravej, a close
political ally, and then prime minister Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's
brother-in-law.
The Democrats, who had been in the opposition for the past eight
years, were caught flat-footed in the face of Thaksin's populist
policies that won him tremendous support among the rural poor in the
North and North-East, where more than half the population reside and
vote.
But Abhisit scored a publicity victory Sunday when he attended the
funeral of 84-year-old Niam Panmanee in Ubon Ratchathani, 420
kilometres north-east of Bangkok, who supported him in the last
election by giving him a ring as a good luck charm.
It was one of the first times that Abhisit, a 44-year-old Oxford
graduate who is faulted for lacking a common touch, has resorted to
such a publicity stunt.
'Everyone says he needs to get out there and be more of a public
figure and he's doing it,' said Baker. 'This is important. This shows
the Democrats understand they've got to play the people's role.'
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