/ 2 December 2008

Thai protesters agree to clear airport

Anti-government demonstrators agreed on Tuesday to allow flights to resume from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

Anti-government demonstrators agreed on Tuesday to allow flights to resume from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport after a week-long blockade, a protest leader said.

“As of this moment, the PAD [People’s Alliance for Democracy] has allowed flights to take off and land immediately, both passenger and cargo flights,” senior alliance member Somkiat Pongpaiboon told reporters.

The PAD occupied Suvarnabhumi and the smaller Don Mueang domestic airport last week, stranding 350 000 passengers and causing massive damage to the Thai economy.

Thailand’s airport authority confirmed there was an agreement with protesters, saying flights may be able to resume if there are no “technical problems”.

“We have reached an agreement with PAD to start clearing protesters from the passenger zone to reopen Suvarnabhumi Airport,” said Vudhihaandhu Vichairatama, chairman of the board of Airports of Thailand.

“But how soon depends on technical issues. If there is no technical problem the first flights would resume within 24 hours,” Vudhihaandhu said.

Meanwhile, a Thai court on Tuesday dissolved the ruling party and banned the premier from politics, plunging the kingdom into further uncertainty.

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat — the target of months of protests — will now step down after the Constitutional Court ruled that his party should be scrapped because an executive was convicted of vote buying.

Somchai was banned from politics for five years, along with 36 other People Power Party executives, achieving a key goal of royalist demonstrators who have blockaded the capital’s two airports for the past week.

“My duty is over. I am now an ordinary citizen,” Somchai (61) told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai from where he has been governing since an opposition blockade of the airports began.

“But it is unexpected that the decision would come out this way. In the past I have done my best, not for myself but for our country,” said Somchai, the brother-in-law of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The former lawyer spent less than three months in power, beset by protesters from the PAD, who accused his government of acting as a proxy for Thaksin and of being hostile to the monarchy.

About 500 angry government supporters massed outside the administrative court, where judges read the ruling live on national television after earlier rallies by the group forced them to change location.

“As the court decided to dissolve the People Power Party, therefore the leader of the party and party executives must be banned from politics for five years,” said Chat Chonlaworn, head of the nine-judge court panel.

“The court had no other option,” he said.

The ruling came after a blast early on Tuesday killed one protester and injured 22 others at the domestic Don Mueang airport. He died from shrapnel wounds to the stomach, an emergency services spokesperson said. — AFP