Democrats claim numbers to form Thai government
Updated
Abhisit Vejjajiva, leader of Thailand's Democrats, appears close to becoming the country's next Prime Minister.
Today four parties- all former members of the ruling coalition - held a press conference in Bangkok to confirm they were backing the Oxford educated Dr Abhisit in an attempt to end months of political instability in Thailand. A further 37 MPs from the ruling party have also formed a breakaway group to support the Domocrats. Reports suggest Parliament is likely to meet early next week to resolve the impasse. Deputy Leader Kraisak Choonhavan
Presenter: Bill Bainbridge
Speaker: Dr Kraisak Choonhavan,
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DR KRAISAK CHOONHAVAN: There is a general feeling among the members of parliament that if the former PPP, the People's Power Party, were to be allowed to form the government, a controversy, a political conflict will not be lifted and that there will be continual conflict between the protesters in the streets which have caused a lot of problems as you may have been informed for the past five months or so.
BILL BAINBRIDGE: So if the Democrats do form a government, you will have benefited enormously from the activities from the People's Alliance for Democracy. Do you intend working with them to help deliver any of the demands such as the change that they wanted to the electoral system?
DR KRAISAK CHOONHAVAN: Well, it will be very difficult, because admittedly there is a distance between us and the protesters. For instance, penalising every single member of the administration if any member of them was caught buying votes or any election fraud.
On that issue, it does hamper political party workings, because it would penalise like dozens of people if they have nothing to do with it.
Now if there were evidences that it was an agreed or a party policy to buy votes, I would agree with that.
BILL BAINBRIDGE: Thailand is now a deeply divided society. What are the Democrat plans to heal those divisions if you win government?
DR KRAISAK CHOONHAVAN: The division is basically created by the People's Alliance for Democracy the PAD when they rose in protest against Mr Thaksin. It had to do with the politics of these surrogates who are unrepenting or were single mindedly trying to impede or intervene on the investigation through attempts to change the Constitution. I don't think we will touch those clauses at all. In fact in the short term, I think we see eye-to-eye on that matter.
BILL BAINBRIDGE: But if the current government loses power, there is likely to be considerable anger about that in many of the provincial centres of Thailand, don't you agree?
DR KRAISAK CHOONHAVAN: The provincial people supports us. This is the fallacy which I think the Western press has become a bit dogmatic on this. They beat us by only 100,000 votes. We did get most of our votes come from the countryside. But admittedly, the strength of the Democrat Party comes from the educated class, the professional class, which are based in the cities.
