ST-11/11/2009 by Nirmal Ghosh
Bangkok – Former Thai premier and veteran politician Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said on Tuesday that the government should call an election soon, warning that ’something big could happen’ if it did not.
The enigmatic 77-year-old former army chief, who created a stir when he joined the Thaksin Shinawatra-aligned Puea Thai as its chairman last month, did not elaborate.
Asked if the Puea Thai would win an election, he laughed and said: ‘Of course.’
But he warned that Thailand would always suffer internal divisions if the military did not stop interfering in politics. Current political divisiveness was a result of the September 2006 coup d’etat which deposed former premier Thaksin on the basis of corruption and disrespect for the monarchy, he said.
‘We have been trying to integrate people with different points of view for the past 40 years,’ he told a small group of foreign journalists. ‘But we have to make sure of a political environment that is conducive to a true democracy where every voice counts.’
‘Power has not been vested in the people, there has been no genuine democracy, for 77 years,’ he added, referring to the change in 1932 from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy.
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