By Nopporn Wong-Anan
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A grenade killed an anti-government protester at Bangkok's blockaded Don Muang airport on Tuesday, hours before a vote fraud case that could force the prime minister and much of his cabinet to resign.
Thai media said an M79 grenade was fired from a flyover near the domestic airport, occupied along with the main international airport by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) in its escalating campaign to topple the government.
Around 22 people were wounded in the airport attack shortly after midnight. An emergency services official said 17 had already been discharged from hospital.
The electoral fraud case was to have been heard at the Constitutional Court in Bangkok but the authorities moved it after hundreds of red-shirted government supporters surrounded the building early on Tuesday.
The final hearing in the case was now due to start at 10 a.m. (3 am. GMT) at Bangkok's Administrative Court. A Reuters reporter said at least two trucks started ferrying government supporters to that court when news of the change of venue emerged.
Fears of violent clashes, or worse, are growing.
"It now seems that violence cannot be avoided. Some even predict what has been unthinkable for 700 years: a civil war," the Bangkok Post said in an editorial.
It also asked: "Does Thailand have a functioning government?"
That question will be even more pertinent if the court rules, as just about everyone expects, that three of the governing coalition parties were guilty of vote fraud in last December's election, and forces them to disband.
The Constitutional Court has moved with uncharacteristic speed to wrap up the case and has decided there is no need to hear testimony in support of the defendants.
A PRE-JUDGED CASE
The People Power Party (PPP) of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat said it would boycott the hearing as the court had "pre-judged" the outcome.
If the PPP and the two allied parties are dissolved, Somchai and other leaders would be barred from politics and many cabinet ministers would have to step down.
However, it will not necessarily mean a snap election as many PPP MPs will simply switch to a new "shell" party already set up.
The yellow-shirted PAD demonstrators at the airport are trying to topple Somchai, whom they accuse of being a pawn for his brother-in-law, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup and is now in exile.
Somchai insisted on Monday he would not go.
"I will not quit and I will not dissolve parliament," he told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai.
Several thousand PAD supporters have occupied the prime minister's offices since August but the PAD has said it would hand the compound back to the authorities on Tuesday.
A Reuters reporter said only a handful of PAD activists remained at Government House early on Tuesday. There were no police present, but cranes had arrived to remove the shells of six buses used to barricade surrounding roads.
The PAD leadership apparently intends to move more supporters to the international airport, which has been blockaded for a week, adding to the pain of a tourist- and export-dependent economy already suffering from the global financial crisis.
Thousands of foreign tourists have been stranded and the air cargo industry has ground to a halt.
Finance Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech told Reuters on Monday the economy might be flat next year, or grow by just 1-2 percent, after earlier growth forecasts of between 4-5 percent.
The chaos has worried Thailand's neighbours, due to meet in the country in two weeks for a regional summit. The Thai cabinet is expected to approve a delay to March when it meets in Chiang Mai on Tuesday.
(Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Jerry Norton)
