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Thai PM under siege as lengthy protests take toll on economy
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Protesters seeking to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra surrounded Thai government headquarters yesterday in response to police efforts to clear them from the streets, as farmers besieged her temporary office to demand payment for rice.
Thailand has been in crisis since November, when Bangkok’s middle class and the royalist establishment started a protest aimed at eradicating the influence of Yingluck’s brother Thaksin, a populist former premier ousted by the army in 2006 who is seen as the power behind her government.
Data published yesterday showed the economy grew just 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter from the third and, with the country likely to be without a fully functioning government for months, the state planning board slashed its 2014 forecast.
About 10,000 anti-government demonstrators surrounded Government House in Bangkok, taking back control of a road the police had cleared them from on Friday in the first real sign of a pushback by the authorities after months of protests.
“We will use quick-dry cement to close the gates of Government House so the cabinet cannot go in,” said Nittitorn Lamrue of the Network of Students and People for Thailand’s Reform, aligned with the main protest movement.
It was a symbolic gesture, Yingluck having been forced to work elsewhere since January.
The separate protests by rice farmers could turn out to be more damaging for Yingluck.
Rural voters swept her to power in 2011, when her Puea Thai Party pledged to pay rice farmers way above market prices. But the program has run into funding problems and some farmers have not been paid for months.
Television reports showed farmers climbing barbed wire fences and barriers at a Defense Ministry compound where Yingluck has set up offices. They pushed back riot police but did not enter the building.
“The prime minister is well off but we are not. How are we going to feed our children? I want her to think about us,” said one protesting farmer.
The Government Savings Bank said on Sunday it had lent 5 billion baht (US$153 million) to the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, which runs the rice scheme.
Some depositors, apparently hearing on social media that it would be used for the rice payments — and therefore help the government — withdrew 30 billion baht yesterday.
Consumer confidence sank in January to its lowest level in more than two years and the planning agency cut its forecast for growth in 2014 to between 3-4 percent from 4-5 percent seen in November.
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