Protesters hand over Bangkok airport

ArticleData Array ( [Article] => Array ( [article_id] => 1001346 [headline] => Protesters hand over Bangkok airport [abstract] => Hundreds of jubilant anti-government protesters have started streaming out of Bangkok's main airport in cars, taxis and buses, as authorities said flights would resume within 24 hours. [keywords] => Thai, airport, protesters [content] =>

Hundreds of jubilant anti-government protesters have started streaming out of Bangkok's main airport in cars, taxis and buses, as authorities said flights would resume within 24 hours.

The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) movement officially handed over control of the airport after an eight-day siege which has left 350,000 travellers stranded in Thailand and caused massive economic losses.

The exodus began a day after the movement claimed victory in its campaign against Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, when a court barred the premier from politics and disbanded the ruling party.

"Major General Chamlong had a handover ceremony of the airport to Airports of Thailand," said protest leader Somkiat Pongpaibul, referring to PAD co-founder Chamlong Srimuang.

"From now the protesters will start to leave. Some of them have started to leave since this morning and gone home. We will come back when the nation needs us," he said.

Chamlong hugged and shook hands with Airports of Thailand boss Vudhibhandhu  Vichairatana, witnesses said, before bowing down and paying his respects in front of a portrait of Thailand's much-revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Vudhibhandhu said a domestic Thai Airways flight from the southern tourist town of Phuket would land at Suvarnabhumi airport on Wednesday afternoon, while international flights would resume the next day.

He said the first international departure would be a Thai Airways flight to Rome.

"We will try and get everything back to normal as soon as possible," he told reporters at the airport. 

Damage from the occupation of the airport since November 25 had not yet been estimated, he said.

An AFP correspondent saw hundreds of protesters piling their belongings on private vehicles, cabs and coaches before driving away from the gleaming three-billion-dollar facility.

"I am looking forward to sleeping in my home, but everybody came here because they love the king," said Neepirom Kunniam, 58, wearing the movement's trademark yellow clothes, which symbolise devotion to the monarchy.

A line of hundreds of protesters snaked through the departures area early Wednesday as they got autographs from Chamlong and his PAD co-founder Sondhi Limthongkul.

Former ruling party members have vowed to form another government under a new banner after the toppling of Somchai, who was barred from politics for five years by the Constitutional Court in a vote fraud case.

Protesters accused Somchai's administration of acting as a proxy for exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006, and of being hostile to the monarchy.

The PAD are backed by the Bangkok business elite and middle classes, along  with elements in the military and the palace.

"In the next two weeks I think we will come again," said protester Pas Apinantpreeda.

"We have got a reason to leave, in the next two days we have the ki ng's birthday and we don't want any problems for him. But I think the ruling party will collaborate to make a new government, we cannot accept that," he said.

PAD protests led to the coup which toppled Thaksin and the group took to the streets again in May this year. Somchai's predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, was forced out in September for receiving payment for a TV cooking show.

The king celebrates his birthday on Friday and is due to make a speech a day earlier.

Analysts said the developments would bring a brief respite until the  remnants of the government tried to name a new premier in parliament, probably on December 8, but would not solve the kingdom's underlying problems.

Somchai's party said it was ready to move lawmakers into a different shell party and continue administering the country, and the other coalition parties have vowed to back them.

 

 

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Almost 300 passengers have arrived in Melbourne after finally flying out of Thailand where mass protests had crippled Bangkok's main airports.
 
A Jetstar flight landed just before lunchtime today with hundreds of tired but relieved Australians and other international travellers.

Many told of enduring a cramped 12-hour bus ride from Bangkok to Phuket, where they were finally able to get on a plane.

Jannene Harker, of Rockhampton in Queensland, said she had been stuck in Thailand for six days before boarding the overnight Jetstar flight.

Ms Harker said she had originally flown into Thailand from the Indian capital New Delhi and was expecting to be in transit for only a few hours.

"When we left New Delhi the international airport at Bangkok had just closed and we had to land at the domestic airport," she said. 

"I was meant to be in transit at the international airport for five hours but in the end stayed there for six days."

Irish tourist Samantha Lee Doyle said she had no option but to board a cramped mini-bus for a 30-hour journey from Bangkok to the Malaysia capital Kuala Lumpur to avoid the protest action.

"It's horrible, there are no options, the buses were really loaded up. There were only mini-buses and they were all packed full of people," Ms Doyle, 27, said.

"They're ripping everyone off on the basis that there are no flights."

Demonstrators with the People's Alliance for Democracy overran Bangkok's main airports a week ago in a bid to oust the government, leaving 300,000 travellers stranded.

Thailand's Constitutional Court moved to end the crisis on Tuesday when it dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud in the 2007 vote that brought them to power.

The ruling ousted Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, and banned him from politics for five years.

Protest leaders said the airport seizures would end on Wednesday.

Officials in charge of Thailand's airports said the main Suvarnabhumi international airport would resume operations on Friday.
 
 

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 3 December 2008 [articletime] => 3 December 2008 [display_order] => 3 ) [1] => Array ( [article_id] => 1001339 [headline] => Protests may be over, but Thai turmoil runs deep [abstract] => The court ruling forcing Thailand's premier from office appears to have ended crippling protests, but analysts say the kingdom's political problems run deep and will flare up again. [content] =>

The court ruling forcing Thailand's premier from office appears to have ended crippling protests, but analysts say the kingdom's political problems run deep and will flare up again.
  
The Constitutional Court disbanded premier Somchai Wongsawat's majority People Power Party and two of its coalition partners yesterday, a week after anti-government demonstrators shut down Thailand's main airport.

Protesters say they will now end the movement they started seven months ago and lift the airport siege.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, told AFP that the court ruling effectively "eliminated now almost a generation of Thai politicians."

Supporters of the three disbanded parties will also be furious with the verdict, he said, possibly stoking tensions in the kingdom.

The three parties were banned after party executives were stripped of parliamentary seats for vote fraud during elections in December 2007 – the first polls since premier Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a 2006 coup.

Thaksin's enemies in the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) have been battling the government since May, accusing it of being his puppet and taking the protests to new heights with the airport blockades.

Rival pro-government protesters have taken to the streets in recent days, and grenade attacks on PAD protest sites by unidentified groups have so far claimed three lives.

The court verdict marks the political demise for Thaksin's brother-in-law Somchai, who quickly said he accepted the ruling, but it will not necessarily bring down the government.

All executives of the dissolved parties are now banned from politics for five years, but there are hundreds of parliamentarians who can continue with their functions, provided the ruling coalition hangs together.

For the government to survive, lawmakers from banned parties who are not executives must move to new shell political parties and then call a parliament session to nominate a new prime minister.
  
This has been tentatively scheduled for early next week.
  
Chris Baker, who has written a number of books on Thai politics, warned that the situation could flare up again if the protesters disapprove of the choice of new premier.

"He would face almost exactly the same problems very quickly," Baker said.

"Then I think the army would move."

Relations between the current government and the military are at an all-time low. The army chief made it clear that he did not want the PAD protesters at the airport forcibly removed for fear of bloodshed.

Protest leaders have already warned that they will quickly reactivate their campaign if they are not happy with the incoming government.

"PAD is ready to take to the streets if people from the Thaksin regime return," the movement's founder Sondhi Limthongkul said in a statement.

Thitinan said earlier that his greatest fear was that the "extremely angry" government supporters would clash with rivals in the PAD.

PAD protests represent a deeper, long-running divide in Thai society between supporters and detractors of Thaksin.

The movement's backers include elements in the military, bureaucracy and the palace, who despised Thaksin because of his popularity with the rural poor.

The divide is also geographical, with Thaksin still wildly popular in the north and northeast, while Bangkok's middle classes and people in the south appear desperate to purge Thailand of his influence.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political analyst also at Chulalongkorn, called Tuesday's ruling a "judicial coup d'etat" and said it showed an increasing willingness for the courts to wade into politics.

"It's not going to solve the problems," he told AFP. "It really shows that the elite are lining up against the government and the majority of the electorate."
 

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 3 December 2008 [articletime] => 3 December 2008 [display_order] => 4 ) [2] => Array ( [article_id] => 1001261 [headline] => Thai court dissolves ruling party [abstract] => A Thai court has dissolved the ruling party and banned the premier from politics, as an occupation of Bangkok's airports turned increasingly bloody. [content] =>

A Thai court has dissolved the ruling party and banned the premier from politics, plunging the kingdom into further uncertainty as an occupation of Bangkok's airports turned increasingly bloody.

"We have reached an agreement with PAD to start clearing protesters from the passenger zone to reopen Suvarnabhumi Airport," said Vudhihaandhu Vichairatama, chairman of the board of Airports of Thailand.
   
"But how soon depends on technical issues. If there is no technical problem the first flights would resume within 24 hours," Vudhihaandhu said.

Thai protesters agree to clear airport
     
Anti-government demonstrators agreed to allow flights to resume from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi international airport after a week-long blockade, a protest leader
said.

"As of this moment the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy) has allowed flights to take off and land immediately, both passenger and cargo flights," senior alliance member Somkiat Pongpaiboon told reporters.
   
The PAD occupied Suvarnabhumi and the smaller Don Mueang domestic airport last week, stranding 350,000 passengers and causing massive damage to the Thai economy.

Thailand's airport authority confirmed there was an agreement with protesters, saying flights may be able to resume if there are no "technical problems".

Somchai to step down

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat -- the target of months of protests -- will now step down after after the Constitutional Court ruled that his party should be scrapped because an executive was convicted of vote buying.

Somchai was banned from politics for five years, along with 36 other People Power Party executives, achieving a key goal of royalist demonstrators who have blockaded the capital's two airports for the past week.

"My duty is over. I am now an ordinary citizen," Somchai, 61, told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai from where he has been governing  since an opposition blockade of the airports began.

"But it is unexpected that the decision would come out this way. In the past I have done my best, not for myself but for our country," said Somchai, the brother-in-law of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The former lawyer spent less than three months in power, beset by protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) who accused his government of acting as a proxy for Thaksin and of being hostile to the monarchy.

 About 500 angry government supporters massed outside the administrative court, where judges read the ruling live on national television after earlier rallies by the group forced them to change location.

"As the court decided to dissolve the People Power Party, therefore the leader of the party and party executives must be banned from politics for five years," said Chat Chonlaworn, head of the nine-judge court panel.

 "The court had no other option," he said.

Unrest continue

Riot police with bullet-proof shields stood guard, as tensions in Thailand remained on the brink with the anti-government PAD continuing their week-long crippling airport siege.

The ruling came after a blast early Tuesday killed one protester and injured 22 others at the domestic Don Mueang airport. He died from shrapnel wounds to the stomach, an emergency services spokeswoman told AFP.

It also came just hours after the PAD ended a three-month sit-in at the prime minister's offices in Bangkok, following a series of similar attacks, and  redeployed supporters to Don Mueang and the Suvarnabhumi international airport.

The PAD, who dress in yellow which they say symbolises their devotion to Thailand's much-revered king, are backed by the Bangkok business elite and middle classes, along with elements in the military and the palace.

Thaksin, whose supporters dress in red, is hugely popular with Thailand's rural and urban poor, especially in the north, his native area.

Two of the PPP's coalition partners were also dissolved because some of their executives were convicted of vote fraud after elections in December 2007-- the first since the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin.

Together the three banned parties controlled about a third of parliament.

The PPP was ready to move lawmakers into a shell party called Pheu Thai (For Thais) formed in anticipation of the verdict and continue administering  the country, spokesman spokesman Kudeb Saikrajang said.

The PPP had boycotted the court proceedings.

"I am sad to hear this devastating ruling which we had no chance to defend," Kudeb told AFP. "But our remaining 216 MPs will move to the Pheu Thai party and bid to open the house to elect a new prime minister."

The unrest continued to take a heavy toll on the 350,000 travellers stranded in Thailand by the crisis, with three tourists including two Canadians dying in road accidents as they tried to flee the "Land of Smiles."

A Hong Kong national was also killed -- in the same accident, according to some reports.

Airline passengers have been flooding to a naval base southeast of Bangkok and to the southern tourist town of Phuket to try to escape the country, along often dangerous roads.

The turmoil also forced Thailand to postpone a summit of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN, which was due to be held in Chiang Mai in mid-December.
 

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