Thailand’s ruling party yesterday questioned the reasoning behind a court decision saying that it can postpone a general election set for next week, but held open the possibility that it might put off the polls if its political rivals recognize the legitimacy of a new vote.
Officials from Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s ruling Pheu Thai Party said that the Thai Constitutional Court’s ruling seemed to have no solid legal basis.
However, they hinted that the government would consider a postponement of the polls on Sunday next week if the opposition Democrat Party — which plans to boycott the polls — agrees to take part, and if anti-government demonstrators cease protests demanding that Yingluck step down before any election so an interim government can implement anti-corruption reforms.
Photo: AFP
However, neither the Democrats nor the protesters have agreed to such terms.
“This isn’t about compromise,” protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban said yesterday. “The people [protesters] will never go home because what the people want is political and national reform.”
The debate came as polling stations across Thailand prepared for advance voting today, despite threats from protesters to block that.
Volunteers and election workers turned up yesterday to get instructions and training at stations that in some parts of the country are likely to see confrontation.
Problems are most likely to emerge in Bangkok, where there are 50 venues, and in the south, which is a stronghold of the opposition.
Yingluck’s government is under extreme pressure from the protesters, who have been out in force on the streets of the capital, Bangkok, for more than two months.
The protest group, calling itself the People’s Democratic Reform Committee, has occupied key intersections in the city, and tried to shut down government offices and prevent civil servants from working.
The protesters say Yingluck’s government is carrying on the practices of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, her billionaire brother who led the country from 2001 to 2006, by using the family fortune and state funds to influence voters and cement its power.
Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 after street protests accusing him of corruption and abuse of power. The coup triggered the ongoing struggle for power between Thaksin’s supporters and opponents. He fled into exile in 2008 to avoid a two-year prison sentence for a conflict of interest.
The government this week imposed a state of emergency on Bangkok and surrounding areas after a spate of protest-related violence. The measure allows the suspension of many civil liberties.
The protesters say they will ignore any measures imposed by the decree, which is valid for 60 days, and staged marches yesterday in defiance of the regulations set under the state of emergency.
Pheu Thai deputy spokesman Anusorn Iam-saard, told a news conference yesterday that several issues needed to be cleared up if the polls are to be postponed.
These included the Democrat Party agreeing to take part in any scheduled vote; that it ends the street protests; that the Democrats and the protesters accept the rescheduled election’s results; and that the Democrats and the demonstrators not resume their protests after the polls.
Pheu Thai candidate Thanin Boonsuwan said the court’s ruling did not meet the conditions set by the law or by precedent, adding that it was an opinion and did not mandate a poll postponement.
The court ruled that the power for postponement rests with the prime minister and the chief of the Thai Election Commission.
Delays are justified under the law “to prevent public disaster and severe damage from happening to the nation or the people,” it said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the