Thai PM survives no-confidence vote
PUBLISHED ONNovember 28, 2013 4:29 AM
BANGKOK: Thailand's embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Thursday easily survived a parliamentary no-confidence vote against her, the house speaker said.
"Prime Minister Yingluck won the vote of confidence," said Somsak Kiatsuranont, with 297 lawmakers voting in her favour and 134 against.
Yingluck needed more than half, or 246 votes, out of the 492 votes in the lower house to survive the no-confidence vote.
The Prime Minister's Puea Thai Party and coalition partners which dominate the lower house survived the three-day debate called by the opposition over a 3.5 billion baht (US$108 million) water management scheme and financially troubled government rice intervention scheme.
The vote follows mass street protests in Bangkok by opposition protesters seeking to topple Yingluck's elected government.
The protests led to emergency security laws being invoked on Monday, after protesters forced their way inside the finance ministry and through the gates of the foreign ministry compound.
The protestors accuse Yingluck of being a puppet for her brother, the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup and convicted two years later of corruption.
The unrest led by the opposition Democrat party, has plunged Thailand into its deepest political uncertainty since the last string of street protests three years ago.