(Updates with opposition leader backed to be next prime minister, quotes)
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand's main opposition party said Saturday it could form a government with members of the ruling coalition that collapsed this week, freezing out allies of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The surprise development comes just days after a court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his position and disbanded the pro-Thaksin People Power Party in a vote fraud case, following months of anti-government protests.
Thaksin's powerful ex-wife Pojaman had flown into Bangkok late Friday, in a sign that plans for the PPP to reform under a new name and set up a new coalition goverment were in trouble.
"We have agreed to form a government to revive the country's economy and confidence," Sungthep Tuagsuban, secretary general of the main opposition Democrat Party, told reporters after meetings with the PPP's former allies.
Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006 but his supporters won elections in December last year, triggering months of protests that culminated in demonstrators besieging Bangkok's airports earlier this month.
Somchai was Thaksin's brother-in-law.
One of the former coalition parties said at the same press conference that it would back the chief of the Democrat Party, Oxford-educated Abhisit Vejjajiva, to be Thailand's new prime minister.
"Everybody agrees to support Abhisit," said Sanam Kajorn-pasart, an adviser to the Chart Thai party, which was the second biggest in the coalition that was brought down by the constitutional court on Tuesday.
"I have been in politics for 30 years. This is the first time the country has experienced political deadlock which has no exit, and we have been told by the public to switch poles from the PPP to resolve the crisis," he added.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 06, 2008 08:30 ET (13:30 GMT)

Publié le 06 Décembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones