Thailand's Prime Minister to Step Down
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3770546.html
BANGKOK, Thailand - Embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra
abruptly announced Tuesday he will step down from office, bowing
to a mounting opposition campaign seeking his ouster over
allegations of corruption and abuse of power.
"We have no time to quarrel," he said. "I want to see
Thai people unite and forget what has happened."
Results from Sunday's election showed Thaksin's popularity
had plummeted, and opposition forces had been gearing up to
resume their anti-government protests.
Thaksin insisted he had helped the country since being
first elected in a landslide in 2001. He was returned to
office in 2005 and called Sunday's election to defuse
the political crisis.
Thaksin's party won 57 percent of Sunday's parliamentary
election, but scores of voters abstained, according to
preliminary results. There was a record high number of
abstentions on the ballots in Bangkok, where the anti-Thaksin
movement is strongest, and in southern Thailand, a
traditional stronghold of the opposition Democrat Party.
Before a new Parliament can convene to form a new government
and choose Thaksin's successor, new elections must be held
April 23 in at least 39 constituencies where there was a
failure to meet minimum turnout figures in Sunday's balloting.
Thaksin's announcement late Tuesday was particularly
surprising, given that he said on national television
a day earlier that his party had won 16 million votes _
meeting his threshold of staying in office if he won
more than half of the vote.
In his remarks Monday, he acknowledged a strong protest
vote against him and said he would set up a neutral
committee to decide his political future. He said the
committee would comprise three former prime ministers,
three former Supreme Court chiefs and three former heads
of Parliament to judge whether he should resign.
"If that committee tells me to quit, then I will quit," Thaksin said.
But Thaksin's critics, who for two months have been
staging rallies drawing as many as 100,000 people,
rejected the idea of a reconciliation committee as
insincere and called for new protests this week.
The rallies grew in size after Thaksin's family in
January said it had sold its controlling stake in
telecommunications company Shin Corp. to Singapore's
state-owned Temasek Holdings for a tax-free $1.9 billion.
Critics alleged the sale involved insider trading and
complained that a key national asset was now in a
foreign government's hands.
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