Thai poll ends; outcome unlikely to end political deadlock

Bangkok, Apr 2 (UNI) Polling closed in Thailand's snap election today with caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra expected to win a third successive term in the one-horse contest which is unlikely to resolve the country's two-month-old political deadlock.

According to election officials, a large proportion of the country's 44 million eligible voters turned out to exercise their franchise at more than 80,000 polling booths across the country.

Three security personnel were injured in bomb explosions, one at a polling station in the country's troubled southern region where a violent Islamic separatist campaign has claimed more than 1,100 lives in the past two years.

Mr Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party is the sole contender in over 250 constituencies of the 500-member lower house of parliament with the three main opposition parties boycotting the polls.

However, this has made it difficult for the caretaker Prime Minister's party to meet the election law requirement of winning at least a fifth of the votes in a constituency.

Constitutional experts and political analysts expect subsequent rounds of polling to make up the necessary numbers in parliament without which a government cannot be formed.

More than 50 seats are in south Thailand, the traditional stronghold of the main opposition Democrat Party.

The boycotting opposition parties and an anti-government people's campaign organising massive street protests against Mr Thaksin over the past two months had urged supporters to mark the "no vote" box in the ballot paper to express disapproval for the caretaker Prime Minister. An Assistant Professor in Bangkok's prestigious Chulalongkorn University today tore up his ballot paper after marking the no vote box in the presence of media to express his resentment.

Mr Thaksin, who enjoys widespread rural support, has declared that he will not take office if his party wins less than half the total votes cast on poll day.

The three former parliamentary opposition parties - the Democrat, the Chart Thai and the Mahachon - boycotted today's election in protest against Mr Thaksin's alleged abuse of his unprecedented executive power to subvert constitutional checks and balances.

They have been backed by the increasingly popular anti-government protests led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a platform of pro-democracy civil society groups, NGOs and rights activists.

Today's snap election was called by the caretaker Prime Minister in late February following the political storm triggered by the late January sale of his family telecom business to a foreign company.

Opposition parties and the PAD are demanding constitutional reform under a neutral administration installed by Thailand's revered king instead of a new election.

They have rejected Mr Thaksin's offer to initiate reform of Thailand's 1997 Constitution, which they want to curb the strong executive power as manifested during Mr Thaksin's five years in office.

Mr Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai which is the country's first political party to form an elected single party majority government, won more than two-thirds seats in the 2005 parliament election returning to office for a record second term.

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