Thai prime minister nauseous over critics and "coup plotters"

Bangkok  - Thailand's outspoken Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said Sunday that his official jet could do with some modifications, for special needs that arise after he reads critical press reports.

Speaking on his weekly television show, the right-wing leader of the People Power Party said his critics are so unreasonable and intent on causing chaos that he wanted to throw up on one recent trip out of Bangkok.

"The Boeing 777 is a very good plane but it has no place for me to vomit," he said on "Talk in Samak's Style" on Channel 11.

He also accused an influential activists' group of seeking to provoke another coup by causing chaos in the streets with a rowdy seminar at a Bangkok university Friday. The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) organized street protests that helped undermine former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin was overthrown in a coup in September 2006 by a military that accused him of rampant corruption and cronyism. Samak openly declared himself a proxy during the 2007 campaign, from which Thaksin was banned court order.

The PAD accused the government of seeking to amend a 2007 constitution to block iso as to permit Thaksin and scores of political colleagues re-enter politics. Samak's party and its two allies also face possible dissolution if a legal enquiry deems them guilty of vote rigging.

Friday's seminar turned noisy because a pro-Thaksin group intervened to accuse the academic critics of bias and treason.

Samak defended his weekly broadcasts as necessary to counter what he called dishonest reporting.

"We can't allow these people to say as they please and have the government sit and listen to them without a channel to defend itself, which was the case was during the Thaksin Shinawatra administration." (dpa)

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