Pro-Thaksin party to win Thailand's election: exit polls+

BANGKOK, July 3 Kyodo -
Thailand's opposition Pheu Thai Party, which supports deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, appears to have won Sunday's general election by a landslide, according to exit poll results released after the close of all ballot stations.
At Pheu Thai Party's headquarters in Bangkok, supporters shouted ''Prime Minister Yingluck,'' referring to Thaksin's younger sister, who could be elected by parliament as the country's first female leader.
Yingluck, 44, the party's declared prime ministerial candidate, told reporters that she was grateful for all the votes and that her brother had congratulated her from afar.
They were in touch by phone after three major exit polls conducted by a national university and two private-run universities showed the opposition party winning a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, sweeping some 300 of the 500 seats.
The Pheu Thai Party grabbed a total of 313 seats while the incumbent Democrat Party of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva got only 152 seats, according to the Suan Dusit Rajabhat University poll.
Separate polls conducted by the two private universities -- Assumption University and Sri Pathum University -- showed the Pheu Thai Party obtained 299 and 290 seats respectively.
The Democrat Party was marginalized with merely 132 and 140 seats respectively in the two polls.
In Thailand's two-tier system of voting, 375 legislators are elected by constituency, while 125 candidates are chosen from lists according to the proportion of votes each party receives nationwide on a separate ballot.
Giving two separate interviews by phone from Dubai to local television news programs, Thaksin said he was thrilled to see there was apparently a high voter turnout with enthusiastic voters from rural areas making every effort to return to their hometowns to cast ballots.
''Thais are showing their support for Thailand's flourishing democracy. I see them as trying to strive for reconciliation in the country, wanting to live in peace and putting an end to the conflicts,'' Thaksin told the Thai Public Broadcasting Service.
He also showed strong support for Yingluck to take the administrative leadership and said her first and foremost duty is to achieve reconciliation.
''Without reconciliation, we would move to nowhere,'' he said.
Thaksin, who was elected twice as prime minister in 2001 and 2005 before being ousted in a bloodless military coup in 2006, suggested his sister form a coalition government with smaller political parties, but he declined to say which ones.
Asked if he would be returning to Thailand later this year, Thaksin, who has been living in self-exile abroad since 2008 to avoid being jailed on a corruption conviction, said, ''I don't want to go back while problems still remain. I don't have to go home. I still have much work to do (outside of Thailand).''
''I will go home if I am part of a solution for reconciliation,'' added the 61-year-old ex-leader, who is also wanted by Thai authorities on charges related to terrorism and inciting unrest.
The election is Thailand's first since last year's violent protests and clashes that paralyzed Bangkok and left around 90 people dead.
Abhisit, who had earlier said he hoped the Democrat Party could get around 200-250 seats in the House, has pledged to respect the election results if his party loses.
Amid claims by the Democrats that Pheu Thai is mainly focused on getting an amnesty for Thaksin, Yingluck has insisted that her brother's fate is not the party's top priority and that she intends to resolve the country's problems.
She has also pledged not to conduct political revenge on behalf of her brother, saying she will instead promote reconciliation in the country.
Political unrest in Thailand has been continuing for years, starting with protests against Thaksin's government, followed by the 2006 coup and then mass protests by Thaksin supporters since Abhisit's government came to power in late 2008.