2011年7月6日星期三

Thai Party Forms Coalition Even as the Military Promises Not to Interfere

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在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

The election result was a reversal of the coup and a repudiation of the elite establishment that backed it, taking Thailand into a precarious future.

The head of the victorious Pheu Thai Party and likely prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, 44, is a political novice. She is the youngest sister of Mr. Thaksin, who was forced from office in 2006 and now lives in Dubai, evading a jail term for abuse of power.

On Monday, Pheu Thai shored itself up against expected legal and political challenges by announcing the formation of a five-party coalition, even though it appeared to have won an outright majority of seats in Parliament.

The election result, like the “red shirt” street protests that ended in violence last year, challenged the established political and social order in which the poorer classes in Thailand have historically had little say. Mr. Thaksin, who served as prime minister from 2001 until his ouster, courted this mass base with populist economic policies and turned them into a political force.

Though there was no sign of a direct connection, the election resonated with events in the Middle East, said Charles Keyes, an expert on Thailand at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“There is a period in history going on right now that Thailand is part of,” he said. “There is a strong desire for more popular participation in the shaping of the political system.”

As the election approached and a Pheu Thai victory seemed increasingly likely, the military, which supported the losing Democrat Party, repeatedly denied that it would stage a coup.

The Thai military has staged 18 attempted or successful coups over the years, as much a part of the political process as electoral votes. “I’ve said this several times,” the defense minister, Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon, said on Monday. “We are not going to intervene.”

At the same time, the government’s electoral commission said that it was investigating accusations of fraud and other violations that could disqualify some winning candidates and reduce the margin of the Pheu Thai victory. It said it would announce the final tally within 30 days.

Preliminary results showed Pheu Thai with 264 seats, more than half the total of 500 seats and enough to form a single-party government.

But with both electoral and political challenges in view, Pheu Thai immediately began negotiating with parties that could augment its hold on power and offer safety in numbers.

The losing Democrat Party is the party of the establishment — royalists, old-money business owners and high-ranking military officers — who have defended their place at the center of a traditional hierarchical system of power and wealth.

“I think what this has shown to the military and to the elite is that you cannot simply deny that there is a strong desire on the part of the working class for a significant influence on the political system,” Mr. Keyes said.

The election result does not seem to have closed Thailand’s bitter divide.

“The election is over but the hatred remains,” said the English-language daily The Nation in a headline. It said that Ms. Yingluck had been “thrust into a minefield of power.”

In an informal poll, another daily, The Bangkok Post, found that more than half of respondents believed that there would be more political violence in the future.

A businesswoman with no political experience, Ms. Yingluck would become Thailand’s first female prime minister. After her victory, she denied that she would simply be a front for her brother. “There is a lot of work ahead — tackling economic woes and leading the country on the path of reconciliation,” she said. “These tasks fall upon me.”

At a news conference on Monday she said her government’s priorities would be economic development and reconciliation, a vague term that was also used by the Democrat Party during its divisive period in power.

“Corruption is another problem we will solve,” she said, repeating a campaign promise that also echoed the promises of earlier governments and was a charge leveled by leaders of the coup against Mr. Thaksin.

She promised to deliver on every promise from a campaign program filled with expensive handouts like tax relief, price supports and cash subsidies to the elderly.

Economists say they fear that implementation of these pledges could bring the economy to its knees. A promised 30 percent increase in the minimum wage, for example, could force many small businesses to shut down, they say.


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