Yingluck Shinawatra wins absolute majority

Added on July 4, 2011 at 15:37 Riga time
According to provisional results, the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) won 265 seats in the 500-seat House. Together with smaller political allies, Yingluck Shinawatra could control some 299 seats. She will form a coalition government. The overall turnout was 66%. The Democrats of ousted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva won only 159 seats and will become the main opposition party. The powerful Thai army leadership accepted the election results.

Article added on July 3, 2011 at 22:31 Riga time  
The younger sister of the exiled Thai oligarch Thaksin Sinawatra led the Pheu Thai Party to a landslide victory. Yingluck Shinawatra (*1967) is likely to become Thailand's first female prime minister.

After her brother's landslide victory in 2001, Yingluck Shinawatra managed to win an absolute majority of seats in 2011. According to early estimates of July 3, 2011 the Thaksin “clone” managed to win some 310 seats in the 500-seat House of Representatives of Thailand.

After the 2010 unrest in Thailand, repressed by brutal force, the Thai people thought it was time for a change. They are fed up with the cronies close to King Bhumibol. His regime is in a shape as bad as his own.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva (*1964), in office since 2008, has been heavily tainted by his handling of the Thai unrest. The military's crackdown on the protests organized by Thaksin's National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (DDP) led to massive bloodshed. Some 85 were killed, including over 80 civilians. Abhisit Vejjajiva has already conceded defeat in the 2011 election.

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Thaksin Shinawatra himself was and is no holy figure. In 2010, Thailand's Supreme Court confirmed the bribery accusations against him. His own handling of the drug war in Southern Thailand was as ruthless as the 2010 military crackdown on his own political movement.

Yingluck Shinawatra, the president of her family's property developer company, was a political no-name with close ties to her brother. She had been investigated by Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission in context with the Temasek affair and her sale of AIS stocks. In addition, Thailand's Assets Examination Commitee claimed that she had made up false transactions in context with Ample Rich Co. to avoid income taxes. Thaksin's family empire is a shady affair.

In addition, politics were and are also a Shinawatra family affair. Yingluck's sister is married to Somchai Wongsawat, a former Thai prime minister for Thaksin's People's Power Part (PPP). Soon, Yingluck herself could become the family's third prime minister.

After Thaksin's PPP had been dissolved by the Constitutional Court of Thailand, the former prime minister Thaksin chose his younger sister Yingluck to lead a political movement, the Pheu Thai Party. Initially, she is said to have refused the job. Finally, she accepted the job and was nominated as the party's leading candidate. She campaigned for reconciliation.

“Average” Thai, especially in the countryside, hope that Yingluck will improve their quality of life, as did her populist brother Thaksin. To implement the Pheu Thai Party pledge to raise the minimum wage by 30% seems unsustainable. Some populist campaign slogans will have to be revised. To implement her reconciliation project will become Yingluck Shinawatra's major test.