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Thai ruling party ordered dissolved
Government supporters had surrounded the court to try to stop the hearing [AFP]
Thailand's Constitutional Court has ordered the dissolution of the ruling People Power party for electoral fraud.
The court also ruled on Tuesday that Somchai Wongsawat, the prime minister, and 36 other party members be banned from politics for five years.
Chat Chonlaworn, the head of the nine-judge court panel, said "as the court decided to dissolve the People Power party, therefore the leader of the party and party executives must be banned from politics for five years".
"The court had no other option," he said.
The Chart Thai party, the second largest party in the ruling coalition, was also ordered dissolved and its leaders banned from politics for five years on Tuesday.
The court had earlier changed venues for the hearing after hundreds of government supporters surrounded the building to try to stop the hearing.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from outside the Administrative Court building where the case was moved to, said the PPP had anticipated the ruling and had already moved to set up a new "shell" party to carry on under a different name.
Government supporters had vowed to stop the verdict which they said was an attempt to unseat the democratically-elected government, and our correspondent described the situation outside the court as tense, with some supporters carrying weapons such as sticks and security forces largely refusing to step in.
Also on Tuesday, a coalition of Thai business groups urged the ruling party to step down as a way of defusing the political crisis.
The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking also called on the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) to end its "illegal" blockade of Bangkok's airports and said the government should call a snap election.
Deadly blast
Hours before the court ruling, an anti-government protester was killed and 22 others were wounded in a bomb blast at Bangkok's besieged Don Muang airport.
Local Thai television Channel 7 said a grenade was fired from a flyover near the domestic airport which has been occupied by the PAD since Thursday.
The yellow-shirted PAD supporters have been trying for months to force Somchai out, accusing him of being a proxy for Thaksin Shinawatra, the premier ousted in a 2006 coup and the original target of the anti-government campaign.
Thaksin, who is Somchai's brother-in-law, is in exile after fleeing the country to escape corruption charges.
So far, six people have been killed and scores injured in bomb attacks, clashes with police and street battles between government opponents and supporters.
On Monday Somchai had insisted that he would not leave office under pressure from the PAD.
"I will not quit and I will not dissolve parliament," he told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where he has been forced to govern from after being prevented from returning to Bangkok from a summit in Peru when protesters took over the city's two airports.
Reinforcements
Late on Monday the PAD supporters began leaving the protest camp at Government House which they had occupied since late August, to consolidate their control of the Bangkok airports.
Chamlong Srimuang, a protest leader, said they were moving out of the prime minister's office compound because it was becoming unsafe to stay in the compound, which has frequently come under grenade attacks by unidentified assailants.
A grenade attack early on Sunday at the protest camp wounded about 50 people, prompting PAD leaders to order the move to the two airports to reinforce their numbers there.
The airport siege, coming in the wake of a global economic slump, is expected to severely hurt Thailand's $15bn tourism industry.
Thailand's tourism council says more than 300,000 travellers were stranded in the country, with 35,000 to 45,000 more being added each day the airports remained closed.
Government supporters had surrounded the court to try to stop the hearing [AFP]
Thailand's Constitutional Court has ordered the dissolution of the ruling People Power party for electoral fraud.
The court also ruled on Tuesday that Somchai Wongsawat, the prime minister, and 36 other party members be banned from politics for five years.
Chat Chonlaworn, the head of the nine-judge court panel, said "as the court decided to dissolve the People Power party, therefore the leader of the party and party executives must be banned from politics for five years".
"The court had no other option," he said.
The Chart Thai party, the second largest party in the ruling coalition, was also ordered dissolved and its leaders banned from politics for five years on Tuesday.
The court had earlier changed venues for the hearing after hundreds of government supporters surrounded the building to try to stop the hearing.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from outside the Administrative Court building where the case was moved to, said the PPP had anticipated the ruling and had already moved to set up a new "shell" party to carry on under a different name.
Government supporters had vowed to stop the verdict which they said was an attempt to unseat the democratically-elected government, and our correspondent described the situation outside the court as tense, with some supporters carrying weapons such as sticks and security forces largely refusing to step in.
Also on Tuesday, a coalition of Thai business groups urged the ruling party to step down as a way of defusing the political crisis.
The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking also called on the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) to end its "illegal" blockade of Bangkok's airports and said the government should call a snap election.
Deadly blast
Hours before the court ruling, an anti-government protester was killed and 22 others were wounded in a bomb blast at Bangkok's besieged Don Muang airport.
Local Thai television Channel 7 said a grenade was fired from a flyover near the domestic airport which has been occupied by the PAD since Thursday.
The yellow-shirted PAD supporters have been trying for months to force Somchai out, accusing him of being a proxy for Thaksin Shinawatra, the premier ousted in a 2006 coup and the original target of the anti-government campaign.
Thaksin, who is Somchai's brother-in-law, is in exile after fleeing the country to escape corruption charges.
So far, six people have been killed and scores injured in bomb attacks, clashes with police and street battles between government opponents and supporters.
On Monday Somchai had insisted that he would not leave office under pressure from the PAD.
"I will not quit and I will not dissolve parliament," he told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where he has been forced to govern from after being prevented from returning to Bangkok from a summit in Peru when protesters took over the city's two airports.
Reinforcements
Late on Monday the PAD supporters began leaving the protest camp at Government House which they had occupied since late August, to consolidate their control of the Bangkok airports.
Chamlong Srimuang, a protest leader, said they were moving out of the prime minister's office compound because it was becoming unsafe to stay in the compound, which has frequently come under grenade attacks by unidentified assailants.
A grenade attack early on Sunday at the protest camp wounded about 50 people, prompting PAD leaders to order the move to the two airports to reinforce their numbers there.
The airport siege, coming in the wake of a global economic slump, is expected to severely hurt Thailand's $15bn tourism industry.
Thailand's tourism council says more than 300,000 travellers were stranded in the country, with 35,000 to 45,000 more being added each day the airports remained closed.
Bout time, eh ?
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