Sunday Times 2
Thai protesters rally against PM ahead of Senate vote
View(s):BANGKOK (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Thai anti-government protesters rallied across Bangkok today in their latest bid to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, a day before a crucial vote to elect a new Senate.
Waving flags and blowing whistles, protesters marched from Lumpini Park in the business district of Bangkok, where protesters retreated to earlier this month, toward the city’s old quarter.
Anti-government protesters wave flags as they follow their leader Suthep Thaugsuban marching in downtown Bangkok (Reuters)
“There are enough protesters to cause traffic headaches but there are less participants than at past rallies,” Paradorn Pattanathabutr, a security adviser to the prime minister, told Reuters.
“We think the crowd will swell to 50,000 people. Protesters are still trickling in from outside the capital and we have 8,000 police on standby if violence takes place but, overall, we’re not expecting anything to happen.”
Thailand has been in crisis since former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother, was ousted in a 2006 coup. The conflict broadly pits the Bangkok-based middle class and royalist establishment against the mostly poorer, rural supporters of the Shinawatras.
Saturday’s march is seen as a test of the anti-government movement’s popularity as the number of protesters has dwindled considerably in recent weeks.
By mid-morning police put the crowd at around 30,000. Around 500 protesters from the Network of Students and People for the Reform of Thailand, a splinter group of the main protest group, broke into the compound of Government House, a site largely abandoned by officials.
Over the past five months, protesters have shut state offices and disrupted a February 2 election which was nullified by a court on March 21, leaving Thailand in political limbo and Yingluck at the head of a caretaker government with limited powers.
Since the current round of protests kicked off in November, 23 people have been killed in political violence.