Snap Elections - Thailand

Thailand

In 2005, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai Party was re-elected for a second consecutive term in office when they won a landslide general election victory by grabbing a whopping 375 out of 500 seats in parliament.This result gave his party the power to amend the constitution since they have won a two-thirds majority. However one year later, in 2006, Thaksin was found to have been indulging in corrupt business practices in his own telecommunication firm Shincorp. This led to a violent street protests in Bangkok arranged by his rivals the Democrat party led by the main opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva where they demanded his resignation. On the other hand Thaksin took a gamble and called a snap election scheduled for April 2, 2006 where all the main opposition parties boycotted the polls and over 50% of voters abstained to cast their ballots. Thaksin won by default and captured all the 500 seats in the house of parliament. Months later, the supreme court annulled the election results and ordered a fresh election to be held within 100 days from the date of the court's ruling. However, that wasn't to be as Thaksin was ousted in a bloodless military coup forcing him into exlie in the Philippines and Dubai. The military would stay in power until 2007 when they stepped down and held a general election in December that year to restore democracy.