Thailand鈥檚 premier rejects call to resign ahead of February election
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Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said yesterday she would not resign ahead of national elections set for February 2, her voice filling with emotion as she discussed her family’s role in Thai politics.
Yingluck spoke a day after she announced elections — and a day after the main opposition leader ended a massive protest rally of 150,000 people by insisting his movement had now assumed broad political power.
The streets of Bangkok were quiet yesterday, a national holiday, after weeks of sometimes violent political turmoil as protesters demanded Yingluck give up power to an unelected “people’s council.”
The protesters accuse Yingluck of serving as a proxy for her billionaire brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in self-imposed exile to avoid jail time for a corruption conviction but still wields immense influence in the country.
She became choked up when reporters asked, as they often do, about her family’s position in Thailand’s political scene.
“I’m not without emotion,” she said, her voice quavering. “I’m also Thai. Do you not want me to set foot on Thai soil anymore?
“I have retreated as far as I can. So I ask to be treated fairly,” she said, turning and walking quickly away from the podium.
Her brother Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire, was toppled by a 2006 military coup that laid bare a deeper conflict between Thailand’s elite and largely urban middle class on one side, and Thaksin’s power base in the countryside on the other. That base benefited from his populist policies designed to win over the rural poor.
Ever since, the two sides have been dueling for power, sometimes violently. Since the latest unrest began last month, at least five people have been killed and at least 289 injured.
The latest round of protests began last month when Yingluck’s party tried to pass a bill that would have granted amnesty to Thaksin and others.
The protesters were not quieted by Monday’s announcement of new elections, saying they cannot win the polls because of corruption.
The opposition Democrat Party, allied with the protest movement, has been defeated by Thaksin-allied parties in every election since 2001.
A decree from King Bhumibol Adulyadej scheduled the elections on February 2 and named Yingluck as interim prime minister until then.
On Monday, protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, who faces arrest on insurrection charges, spoke to more than 150,000 followers from a stage near Yingluck’s offices, challenging authorities to “come get me.”
He said his movement was assuming some functions of government, citing a clause in the constitution stating that “the highest power is the sovereign power of the people.”
“This means that from now on the people will appoint the prime minister of the people and appoint the government of the people,” he told a cheering crowd. “This means that from now on, we will have the people’s council doing the legislating instead of the parliament, which is now dismissed.”
Suthep challenged Yingluck to resign to make way for a new prime minister to be appointed outside normal constitutional procedures.
But there was no sign yesterday that Suthep’s movement had assumed any government powers, or that Yingluck’s administration would cede any to them.
Suthep had called for civil servants to report to the protest group instead of the government, and urged citizens to set up their own neighborhood peacekeeping forces to take over from police.
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