TIMELINE: Thailand's long-running political crisis

(Reuters) - Thailand's Constitutional Court ordered Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to stand down on Tuesday, accusing him of breaking the law by hosting cooking shows on commercial television while in office.

His party said it would seek his re-election as premier by parliament on Friday.

Here is a chronology charting the political turmoil that has dogged the Southeast Asian country.

-- 2005

* September: Sondhi Limthongkul, a disgruntled former business associate, starts the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a street campaign dedicated to ousting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Sondhi argues that Thaksin's huge parliamentary majority has made him corrupt.

-- 2006

* April 2: Thaksin wins a snap election designed to silence Sondhi's increasingly biting criticism, but the victory is undermined by an opposition boycott that renders the result void. Judges annul the entire poll a few weeks later.

* September 19: Military stages coup while Thaksin is at U.N. headquarters in New York. He retreats into exile in London.

* October 1: Former army commander-in-chief Surayud Chulanont sworn in as interim prime minister.

-- 2007

* March 26: Prosecutors charge Thaksin's wife, Potjaman, her brother and secretary with tax evasion.

* May 30: Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party is dissolved for breaking election laws. Thaksin and 110 other senior party members are banned from politics for five years.

* August 20: Voters endorse new, military-drafted constitution, the 18th in 75 years of on-off democracy.

* December 23: Pro-Thaksin People Power Party (PPP) falls just short of outright majority in a general election.

-- 2008

* Jan 8: Thaksin's wife, Potjaman, returns to Thailand after months of exile to fight corruption charges.