THAILAND: Thailand's three opposition parties have said they will boycott snap elections on April 2nd, deepening a political crisis and raising the pressure on embattled prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Thaksin, the focus of an increasingly strident campaign based in Bangkok by groups accusing him of abuses of power and tailoring government policies to benefit his family's business, shrugged off the boycott.
"It is each party's decision," he said yesterday. "We've done our best. I've done my best. However, I don't foresee any problem."
Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of the Democrats, the largest opposition party, said the three parties refused to run in the April vote because it did not guarantee political reform, reflecting their accusations that Mr Thaksin had undermined institutions.
"The Chart Thai, Democrat and Mahachon parties agreed unanimously that we will not field candidates in this election," he said after a meeting of the three parties.
Mr Thaksin said he was taking the constitutional path to resolve the crisis by calling an election. His party accused the opposition of betraying democracy by calling for a boycott.
His Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party was expected to win the election comfortably without a boycott, albeit with a smaller majority than the 377 of the 500 parliamentary seats it had a year ago.
However, some analysts said that the boycott, which was likely to bolster the anti-Thaksin campaign and its attendant risks of street violence, did raise thoughts of a coup in a country with a long and relatively recent history of military interventions.
"Every time when there was a coup in the past, military juntas felt the country was in crisis and there was no democratic way out," said Somkit Lertpaithoon, a public law professor at Bangkok's Thammasat University. "Such a move has increased the possibility of a coup."
The baht and stock market have both wobbled in the last few weeks due to fears the political fight might end up on the streets. The stock market rose 1.5 per cent yesterday, with investors thinking the snap election would lead to an end to uncertainty, but it is likely to suffer again today.
"The boycott of the election should be quite a serious issue for stock market investors," Bualuang Securities analyst Chaiyaporn Nompitakcharoen said. "It means political uncertainties and should trigger a sell-off."
Since the end of January, the anti-Thaksin campaign has been boosted by moral outrage among Bangkok's middle classes at the $1.9 billion tax-free sale by Mr Thaksin's relatives of their stake in the telecommunications empire he founded.
Mr Thaksin won a second consecutive landslide election 12 months ago and had seemed impregnable until the outrage exploded in Bangkok about his relatives' sale of Shin Corp.
His support in the countryside, where 70 per cent of Thais live, is thought to be still solid.
However, on Sunday 50,000 people - the largest crowd of its kind in 14 years - turned out to demand his resignation. Hundreds of "Dharma Army" monks continued the protest through the night and yesterday.
Their leader, Chamlong Srimuang, an ascetic 70-year-old general who led a successful but bloody 1992 "people power" uprising against a military government, urged people to join him and keep up the pressure on Mr Thaksin.
"We will be here until the job gets done," Mr Chamlong told reporters in written answers to questions, saying he had lost his voice. "The only way to get us out of Sanam Luang is to see Thaksin resign," he said as hundreds of "Dharma Army" monks led a Buddhist prayer vigil on Bangkok's Sanam Luang parade ground.
"Our unit will seize this area to keep the rally going around the clock," said Mr Chamlong, who earned his spurs fighting communists in Laos and Vietnam during the Vietnam War.