Thai Vote Looms as Yingluck Dissolves Parliament: Southeast Asia

Thai voters face their third election in six years after Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved parliament to help defuse anti-government protests that are now in their second month in Bangkok.

Should an election proceed on Feb. 2 as mandated by Royal Decree, voters will have to choose between a party aligned with former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother whose allies have won the past five elections, and the Democrat party, which hasn’t won a national poll in two decades and whose leader faces murder charges stemming from a 2010 military crackdown on pro-Thaksin demonstrators. The opposition could also opt to boycott the poll, as it did in 2006.