 |
| Opposition Phue Thai party’s Yingluck Shinawatra arrives at the party headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, July 3, 2011. Exit polls are showing the party allied to ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has won an absolute majority in the fractious country’s tense election Sunday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) |
July 3, 2011
By Todd Pitman
The Associated Press
BANGKOK (AP) - The woman poised to become Thailand's first female prime minister acknowledged huge challenges in reconciling her divided country, after an election landslide seen as a rebuke of the military-backed establishment that ousted her brother in a 2006 coup.
Preliminary results from Sunday's poll showed 44-year-old Yingluck Shinawatra's Pheu Thai party winning the majority it needs to form the next government. If confirmed, the large mandate will likely boost Thailand's stability in the short term and reduce the chance of intervention by the coup-prone military five years after it ousted Yingluck's fugitive brother-in-exile, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The victory comes one year after the government crushed protests by Thaksin supporters with a bloody crackdown that culminated some of the worst violence here in 20 years and ended with the capital ablaze in a wave of arson attacks allegedly carried out by fleeing protesters.
In a late night victory speech in Bangkok on Sunday, Yingluck said: "I don't like to say that Pheu Thai has won, but I'd rather say the people have given the Pheu Thai party and myself a chance to serve them."
No comments:
Post a Comment