REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANGKOK - Protesters trying to topple Thailand's prime minister marched in Bangkok on Tuesday to drum up support for their plans to bring the capital to a halt next week by blockading major roads and preventing the government from functioning.
Caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called an election for February 2 but the protesters, aware she would probably win on the back of support in the rural north and northeast, want her to step down and be replaced by an appointed "people's council" to push through electoral reforms.
The protesters accuse Yingluck of being a puppet of her self-exiled brother and former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, a man they say is a corrupt crony capitalist who used taxpayers' money to buy electoral support with costly populist giveaways.
The anti-government push is intended to block an election that looks increasingly uncertain. The government's supporters fear that if protests fail to halt the poll, chaos or violence could be instigated to trigger intervention by either the military or the judiciary.
Prospect of uncertainty
That prospect became more of a possibility on Tuesday when the National Counter-Corruption Commission decided to press charges against 308 former lawmakers, mostly from Yingluck's Puea Thai Party, for trying to change the constitution to make the Senate a fully elected chamber. The Constitutional Court in November ruled such an amendment illegal.
The impact of a court ruling against those politicians, who do not include Yingluck, is not clear, but it could complicate the election, either before or after it takes place. Puea Thai adviser Prompong Nopparit shrugged off the charges but questioned the timing of the NCCC's decision to pursue them.
"I'm very curious to know why older legal cases concerning opposition lawmakers still haven't moved forward, but charges against the government side have been rushed," he told Reuters.
The refusal by the army's top general to rule out military intervention also puts Yingluck in a precarious position, aware the top brass is close to the royalist establishment that backs the protests and engineered the overthrow of Thaksin in a 2006 coup, one of 18 successful or attempted overthrows in the past 81 years.
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