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Thai opposition loses bid to annul polls

Court ruling a boost for PM; election reruns to be held in April

AFP, Bangkok
Thailand's opposition yesterday lost a legal bid to nullify a controversial election disrupted by antigovernment protests, in a boost to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra's crisis-hit administration.
The kingdom's Constitutional Court declined to consider the petition by the Democrat Party to annul the February 2 vote and disband Yingluck's party, saying there were insufficient grounds.
"It gives a little bit of breathing space for the government but it does not resolve the deadlock," saidThitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.
"The election process remains messy but it has not been derailed," he added.
The Election Commission on Tuesday set a date of April 27 for election re-runs in constituencies where voting was disrupted by protesters.
But there is still no decision on what to do about 28 constituencies that have no candidates because demonstrators blocked the registration process.
The Election Commission has said the results of the vote will not be announced until polls have
been held in all constituencies.
Yingluck will remain in a caretaker role with limited power over policy until 95 percent of the 500 seats in the lower house of parliament are filled to enable the appointment of a new government.
The premier called the polls in an attempt to assuage opposition protesters who have staged more than three months of mass street protests seeking her resignation.
The Democrats boycotted the vote, saying it would not end a political crisis stretching back to a military coup in 2006 that ousted Yingluck's elder brotherThaksin Shinawatra as premier.
The protesters want Yingluck to stand down to make way for an unelected “People's Council" to enact reforms to tackle corruption and alleged vote buying before new polls are held.
The Democrats had argued that the failure to hold the entire election on the same day was an attempt to grab power unconstitutionally - a complaint rejected by the court.
The Constitutional Court also rejected a request by Yingluck's Puea Thai Party to order an end to the opposition protests on the grounds that their action aimed to overthrow the democratic system.