BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's constitutional monarch on Sunday approved a Cabinet reshuffle the government says will strengthen the ruling coalition as it grapples with deep-rooted problems following last month's bloody crackdown to end protests in Bangkok.
Eight new ministers are to step into the Cabinet to shore up the six-party coalition shaken by both a May 19 army crackdown on anti-government protesters and a no-confidence vote in Parliament last week.
"The reshuffle has been made so the government could work together as a unit," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters.
The shake-up involves the ministries of information and communication technology, industry, labor, culture, science and technology, finance, education and the prime minister’s office.
Those who lost their portfolios include ministers of both Abhisit’s Democrat party and also some held by the Puea Pandin party, the small coalition partner that voted against the government on a no-confidence vote. The motion nonetheless failed.
Nearly 90 people — most of them protesters — were killed and some 1,800 injured in violence related to two months of protests by Red Shirt demonstrators demanding that Abhisit call an early election. As troops cracked down, angry protesters set more than 30 buildings ablaze, including the country’s largest shopping mall and the stock exchange.
The protesters were mainly drawn from Thailand’s poor rural and urban population which in recent years has become angry at their second-class status and of a growing gap between the rich and the poor.
The Cabinet ministers who were targeted in the no-confidence motions easily won the votes Wednesday after the opposition accused the government of excessive use of force in putting down the protest and also of corruption.
Sunday’s royal endorsement of the came as Abhisit departed to Vietnam to attend a World Economic Forum of regional leaders where the government said he said he would update the international community on the progress of his reconciliation "road map," his ideas for healing the country’s political divide.
Although the situation in Bangkok has calmed, many analysts say the deep rifts in Thai society will not be easy to fix and could again erupt into violence.
