Anti-government protesters listen to a leader’s speech at an intersection protesters are occupying in downtown Bangkok yesterday.

AFP/Bangkok


Thailand’s opposition yesterday lost a legal bid to nullify a controversial election disrupted by anti-government protests, in a boost to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s crisis-hit administration.
The kingdom’s Constitutional Court declined to consider the petition by the Democrat Party to annul the February 2 vote and disband Yingluck’s party, saying there were insufficient grounds.
“It gives a little bit of breathing space for the government but it does not resolve the deadlock,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
“The election process remains messy but it has not been derailed,” he added.
Demonstrators prevented 10,000 polling stations from opening in this month’s vote, affecting severalmn people, mainly in opposition strongholds in Bangkok and the south.
The Election Commission has said the results of the vote will not be announced until polls have been held in all constituencies.
Yingluck will remain in a caretaker role with limited power over policy until 95% of the 500 seats in the lower house of parliament are filled to enable the appointment of a new government.
The premier called the polls in an attempt to assuage opposition protesters who have staged more than three months of mass street protests seeking her resignation.
The Democrats boycotted the vote, saying it would not end a political crisis stretching back to a military coup in 2006 that ousted Yingluck’s elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra as premier.
The protesters want Yingluck to stand down to make way for an unelected “People’s Council” to enact reforms to tackle corruption and alleged vote buying before new polls are held.
The Democrats had argued that the failure to hold the entire election on the same day was an attempt to grab power unconstitutionally -- a complaint rejected by the court.
“This case is over,” said the head of the opposition’s legal team, Wiratana Kalayasiri, who filed the petition.
“But if the government does anything wrong again, we will make another complaint,” he said.
The Constitutional Court also rejected a request by Yingluck’s Puea Thai Party to order an end to the opposition protests on the grounds that their action aimed to overthrow the democratic system.
Yingluck’s opponents say her government is controlled by her brother Thaksin, who fled Thailand in 2008 to avoid going to jail for a corruption conviction and now lives in Dubai.
Pro-Thaksin parties have won every election for more than a decade, most recently in 2011 under Yingluck, helped by strong support in the northern half of the kingdom.
The Election Commission on Tuesday set a date of April 27 for election re-runs in constituencies where voting was disrupted by protesters.
But there is still no decision on what to do about 28 constituencies that have no candidates because demonstrators blocked the registration process.
Protesters have occupied major intersections in the capital since January 13 in a self-styled “shutdown” of Bangkok, although disruption to people’s daily lives has been limited.
Attendance has fallen sharply with most sites nearly deserted for much of the day and several thousand people joining the rallies in the evenings.
The leaders of the anti-government movement have called for a big two-day protest
starting tomorrow.