Thailand: The leaders of a campaign to oust Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra failed in a last-ditch bid yesterday to disqualify him from a snap election he called three years early in the hope of ending a political crisis.
The administrative court refused to hear a petition by the People's Alliance for Democracy (Pad), the ad hoc coalition bent on driving the telecoms billionaire from office, in time to stop Mr Thaksin running in tomorrow's election, a Pad lawyer said.
The coalition wanted the court to order the election commission to finish its investigation into charges that Mr Thaksin was buying votes in time to disqualify him.
"The court thinks the remaining two days are not enough," Pad lawyer Nakohn Chompuchart told reporters.
The election commission says it is investigating charges the Pad filed earlier this week, but such probes take time and cannot to be completed before tomorrow's vote, which is being boycotted by the three major opposition parties.
Mr Thaksin, who has turned the election into an effective referendum by saying he will step down if his party gets less than 50 per cent of the vote, denies breaking campaign rules.
The bid by the Pad, which is alienating more and more of its Bangkok middle-class supporters by disruptive street protests, was doomed from the start, experts said.
Even if it had ruled in favour of the Pad, the election commission could have appealed, Thammasat University law professor Somkit Lertpaitoon said.
The Pad's street campaign, which intensified in late January after Mr Thaksin's relatives sold a controlling stake in the telecommunications empire he founded for a tax-free $1.9 billion, appears to be waning.
Opinion polls show Bangkok is wearying of the constant protests and the disruptions to normal life they cause.
In its latest poll released yesterday, Assumption University said 70 per cent of its 3,606 respondents in and around Bangkok wanted the protests to stop.
Mr Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, which won 377 of parliament's 500 seats in a February 2005 general election, is expected to win another thumping majority tomorrow on the back of still solid support in the countryside.
- (Reuters)