(Adds quotes, reaction)
By Nopporn Wong-Anan
BANGKOK, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Somchai
Wongsawat was banned from politics for five years and his party
disbanded on Tuesday, spurring jubilant anti-government
protesters to end their blockades of Bangkok's airports.
Government party members said they would switch to a new
"shell" party, already set up, and vote for a new prime minister
on Dec. 8, setting the stage for another flashpoint in
Thailand's three-year political crisis.
Chavarat Charnvirakul, a construction mogul and first deputy
prime minister, was named interim leader, an official said.
Anti-government protesters cheered Somchai's fall after only
2-½ months in power, brought down by a Constitutional Court
ruling that disbanded the ruling party for vote fraud.
Protest leaders said they would halt all rallies, including
crippling sieges of Bangkok's two airports which have stranded a
quarter of a million foreign tourists.
"We've won!" shouted one of the protesters, Angkana
Wongticha, as members of the People's Alliance for Democracy
(PAD) went wild.
PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul said they would pull out of
Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang airports at 10 a.m. (0300 GMT) on
Wednesday, but the protest halt was conditional.
"If a puppet government returns or a new government shows
its insincerity in pushing for political reform, we will
return," said Sondhi. He had accused Somchai of being a pawn of
his brother-in-law, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra,
who was ousted in a coup in 2006.
The airports operator said it would decide on Wednesday when
passenger flights in and out of the capital could resume.
The chaos may soon be over for thousands of stranded
travellers in Thailand, but the country's wider conflict between
forces loyal to Thaksin and Bangkok's royalist elites looked set
to drag on.
"The divisions are so deep, it's difficult to see how it
could be over," said political analyst Giles Ungpakhorn of
Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
The Constitutional Court also disbanded two other parties in
Somchai's six-party coalition for vote fraud in the 2007 general
election and barred their leaders from politics for five years.
Somchai's predecessor, Samak Sundaravej, was also removed by
the courts for hosting a TV cooking show while in office.
Tuesday's rulings raised the risk of clashes between
yellow-shirted PAD supporters and pro-government red-shirts, who
surrounded the court and forced judges to find a new venue.
"The judgement was fixed," Rojarek Phalaburee, a government
supporter from the northern province of Chiang Mai, said.
Hours before the court decisions, one person was killed and
22 wounded after a grenade was fired at protesters at Don Muang
airport.
Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has
intervened in previous political crises during his six decades
on the throne, made no mention of the country's troubles during
a short speech at a Trooping the Colour military parade in
Bangkok.
STRANDED TOURISTS
Some 250,000 foreign tourists have been stranded by the
sit-ins at Suvarnabhumi, a major Asian hub, and the domestic Don
Muang terminal. It was not clear when flights would resume.
"We need time to check the safety and security systems,"
Serirat Prasutanond, acting head of Airports of Thailand, told
Reuters. Before the PAD announced its withdrawal, he had said
the airports would stay closed until Dec. 15.
The first cargo flight in a week left Suvarnabhumi on
Tuesday, a welcome sight for a tourist- and export-dependent
economy already suffering from the global financial crisis.
Finance Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech told Reuters on
Monday the economy might be flat next year, or grow by just 1-2
percent, after earlier growth forecasts of between 4-5 percent.
The travel chaos worried neighbours who were to attend a
regional summit in Thailand in two weeks, prompting the
government to postpone it until March 2009, a spokesman said.
The Thai baht edged up against the dollar and the stock
market rose on optimism that political unrest might subside
after the ruling, but shares soon fell back again.
Tom Byrne, sovereign regional credit officer for Asia and
the Middle East at ratings agency Moody's, told Reuters it was
"difficult to see an end to the destructive political
polarisation in Thailand".
"We think the events of the past week will damage Thailand's
near-term economic outlook and complicate policy making at a
time when the government needs to respond coherently to the
global recession," he said.
All six parties in the coalition government vowed to stick
together and seek a parliamentary vote for a new prime minister
on Dec. 8. Lawmakers who escaped the political ban would move to
new "shell" parties to form another ruling coalition.
"The verdict comes as no surprise to all of us," said
Jakrapob Penkair, a former minister and close ally of Thaksin.
"But our members are determined to move on and we will form
a government again out of the majority that we believe we still
have," he told Reuters.
($1=35.46 Baht)
(Additional reporting by Bangkok bureau; Writing by Darren
Schuettler; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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