REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANGKOK - Thousands of anti-government protesters marched through the Thai capital on Sunday, a prelude to a broader action next week when they said they would shut down Bangkok in their bid to scuttle a February election and topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Sunday's march began at Bangkok's Democracy Monument, where some supporters had gathered overnight. Suthep said the protesters would set up stages at five rallying points through the city leading up to Jan 13.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, a fiery former deputy premier from the main opposition Democrat Party, said marches would be held on Tuesday and Thursday, leading up the January 13 "shutdown".

"We will keep walking, we won't stop," Suthep said on the march. "We will walk until we win and we won't give up."

The protesters, who accuse Yingluck of being the puppet of her self-exiled brother and former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, want an appointed "people's council" to oversee a vague reform platform, which includes electoral reform, decentralizing power, and a volunteer police force, over a 12-month period before any future election.

Yingluck, her brother and their support base among the rural poor in the populous north and northeast are pitted against protesters who draw support from Bangkok's conservative, royalist elite and middle classes and the south.

The crisis, an outbreak of turmoil stretching back eight years, began in November and has become a drag on the Thai economy. The baht slid on Friday to its lowest against the dollar since February 2010 and the benchmark .SETI stock index has lost 15 percent since early November.

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