BANGKOK — The sister of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra led Thailand’s main opposition party to a landslide victory in elections Sunday, heralding an extraordinary political turnaround five tumultuous years after her fugitive billionaire brother was toppled in an army coup.
The vote paves the way for 44-year-old Yingluck Shinawatra, who has never held office, to become this Southeast Asian kingdom’s first female prime minister. A large mandate to govern could help the new government navigate a way out of out of the crisis that has plagued Thailand since Thaksin’s 2006 overthrow. But the question remains whether the nation’s elite power brokers, including the monarchy and the army, would accept the result. Thaksin was barred from politics years ago after a graft conviction, and the U.S.-educated Yingluck, who he calls “my clone,” is widely considered her proxy.
The incumbent premier, Abhisit Vejjajiva, conceded defeat Sunday night and said he was ready to become the opposition.
With 94 percent of the vote counted, preliminary results from the Election Commission indicated Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party had a strong lead with 261 of 500 parliament seats, well over the majority needed to form a government. Abhisit’s Democrats had 162 seats. Speaking to a throng of cheering supporters at her party headquarters in Bangkok, Yingluck declined to declare victory until final results are released. But she said: “I don’t want to say that Pheu Thai wins today. It’s a victory of the people.”
In an interview broadcast on the Thai PBS television station, Thaksin called the preliminary outcome “a step forward.”
“People are tired of a standstill,” he said from the desert emirate of Dubai, where he lives in exile to avoid a two-year prison sentence for graft he says is politically motivated. “They want to see change in a peaceful manner.” Thaksin said he did not feel vengeful and was “ready to forgive all.”
After the army toppled Thaksin, controversial court rulings removed two of the pro-Thaksin premiers who followed, one of whom won a 2007 vote intended to restore democracy. That chain of events paved the way for army-backed Abhisit to assume power – ultimately sparking the massive anti-government protests last year which brought Bangkok to its knees, leaving 90 people dead, 1,800 wounded and the glittering city’s skyline engulfed in flames. Army chief Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha reiterated his vow last week to stay neutral in the vote, dismissing rumors the military would stage another coup.
“The future depends on whether the traditional elite will be willing to accept the voice of the people,” Pavin Chachavalpongpun of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, told The Associated Press.
-Huffington Post
