Thai ruling party vows to stick with Samak as PM

THAILAND: Thailand’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) said on Tuesday it would renominate Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej as Premier if a court disqualified him for hosting TV cooking shows while in office.

“We believe the court will give us justice, but if the court rules otherwise, we will nominate Mr. Samak as the prime minister again,” PPP spokesman Kudeb Saikrachang told Reuters.

“The majority of the PPP think that he is still qualified to be Prime Minister. He is no longer a TV show host and remains the party leader,” he said.

If found guilty of conflict of interest, Samak will have to step down along with his cabinet.

The PPP’s continued support for Samak, which renders the court decision largely irrelevant, is likely to outrage protesters barricaded inside Samak’s Government House compound for the last two weeks demanding his resignation.

Analysts had expected Thai markets to react positively to a court ruling against Samak, seeing it as a possible short-term solution to three years of political turmoil.

That is unlikely now to be the case.

The main gripe of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) is that Samak is a puppet of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed as PM by the army in a 2006 coup.

However, the PAD, a hodgepodge group of royalist businessmen, academics and activists united by their hatred of Thaksin, thought they had cornered Samak on conflict of interest charges for hosting the commercial TV cooking programmes while in office.

The Constitutional Court is expected to give its ruling at 2 p.m. (0700 GMT), a little over 24 hours after Samak testified in his own defence, denying any wrongdoing as the star of “Tasting, Grumbling” and “Touring at 6 a.m.”.

“I have done nothing wrong,” he told the court on Monday, suggesting the case was politically motivated.

He gave up the show in April, more than two months after becoming prime minister.

The speed of the verdict surprised both the government and analysts.

Samak was in the northeastern province of Udon Thani on Tuesday, chairing a “mobile” weekly cabinet meeting necessitated by the protest blockade on his offices.

At a pro-government rally on Monday evening in the town, a stronghold for his seven-month old government, the pugnacious 73-year-old vowed not to resign or call a snap election.

“I declare that I will not dissolve parliament. I will not quit. I will fight on,” he told thousands of cheering supporters.

The standoff between the government and PAD has paralysed administration decision-making at a time of slowing economic growth and high inflation.

It has also scared away visitors to the “Land of Smiles”, with airlines and hotels reporting cancellations as more countries issue travel warnings in the wake of Samak’s declaration last week of a state of emergency.

The tension spilt over into bloodshed last week when a man was killed in a street battle between pro- and anti-government groups, trigging a declaration of a state of emergency from Samak that the highly politicised army chose to ignore.

Two years after its removal of Thaksin in a coup, the army has insisted it will not intervene again, but senior officers acknowledge the political crisis has reached a stalemate.

Udon Thani, Tuesday, Reuters