Thai PM mulls over calls to lift-martial law

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha is ready to consider lifting martial law in some parts of the country to help boost a struggling tourism sector and economy, a deputy prime minister said on Thursday.

Thailand's army imposed martial law nationwide in May, days before it took power in a coup that it said was necessary to end months of, at times, violent street protests aimed at ousting former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Tourism operators have repeatedly urged the government to scrap the law to restore the country's image as a trouble-free holiday destination and bolster tourist arrivals which dropped 7 percent in September from a year earlier.

The tourism sector, which accounts for nearly 10 percent of the economy, suffered its biggest fall in June, a month after the military took power.

Prayuth last month dismissed calls by tourism operators to lift martial law, citing the danger of troublemakers disrupting his efforts to promote political reconciliation. But Deputy Prime Minister Wisanu Krue-ngam told reporters the prime minister was reassessing his stand.

"The prime minister is ready to consider lifting martial law in some areas of the country," said Wisanu.

"We might be able to lift the law in some provinces and use other laws instead to control the situation."

Wisanu did not give a time frame for when the law would be lifted.

"The government will consider this when the time is right ... to help the economy and tourism."

Martial law puts national security in the hands of the military and gives it sweeping powers. It also bars political gatherings of more than five people.

The ruling generals, and the technocrats they have appointed, are trying to put a troubled economy back on its feet.

Thai Finance Ministry cut its gross domestic product growth forecast for 2014 to 1.4 percent last month from 2.0 percent due to poor exports. It also cut its 2015 GDP growth forecast to 4.1 percent from 5.0 percent.

The protests were the latest chapter in nearly a decade of upheaval rooted in confrontation between former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother, and their mostly rural supporters, and the royalist establishment backed by the Bangkok middle class.

(China Daily 11/07/2014 page11)