Medical doctors urge a 'no vote'
The Doctors for Peace group yesterday urged eligible voters to participate in the election but to tick the "no-vote" box on their ballot cards as a solution to the political turmoil.
"People should choose 'no-vote' so that the Thai Rak Thai Party will receive votes from less than half of the total eligible voters, forcing caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to decline the premiership as he has pledged," the group's leader, Dr Sant Hattirat, told a press conference yesterday. "That would pave the way for Thaksin to step down, and his opponents would be happy to get him out without having to sleep and eat in the streets," he said. Sant said he did not believe that all 500 seats in the House of Representatives would be filled as required by the Constitution, and that the protests against the prime minister might continue indefinitely. If voters went to the polls and ticked the "no-vote" box, the divisions in society would be healed and the political deadlock resolved peacefully, without the need for His Majesty the King to appoint a new prime minister, which would not be good for the royal institution, which is worshipped by the people and above politics, he said. Another speaker, Dr Makarathep Thepkanchana, said his group believed Thaksin would not step down before election day, so the best way to end the political crisis was for eligible voters to tick "no-vote" on their ballot cards.
|
