A Thai opposition group vowed yesterday to hold more anti-government street rallies in Bangkok in a bid to force the government of Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to step down, after Samak backed away from threats to forcibly break up the rally.
“We will stay here until the government resigns,” Somsak Kosaisuk, one of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) leaders, said by telephone from the rally at the Makawan Rangsan bridge near the Grand Palace in the heart of Bangkok.
The PAD, a coalition of civic groups, and the opposition Democrat Party accuse Samak’s government of being a puppet of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
PHOTO: AFP
The rallies, which began a week ago, are similar to the PAD’s street campaign against Thaksin before he was ousted in a 2006 coup. The protests two years ago started small but grew to 100,000-strong crowds before the military intervened.
Saturday’s rally swelled to 6,500 protesters watched by several hundred police with shields and batons.
The crowd had thinned to around 400 to 500 by yesterday morning, but Somsak said he expected numbers to grow later and they would be alert to any attempt to break up the rally.
In an address to the nation on Saturday morning, Samak had threatened to crack down on the protests and several hundred riot police were deployed along with hundreds more in reserve.
But as night fell, Thai Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said police would not move against the mainly middle-class crowd, who appeared in a festive mood.
Yesterday Samak said on his weekly television program that he had never intended to disperse the crowd by force and he accused the media of distorting the remarks he made a day earlier.
“I made no threatening words. You [the media] all interpreted what I said wrongly,” Samak said on his regular one-hour program.
But Samak maintained that the PAD had broken the law and must move away from the Makawan Rangsan bridge where the gathering has caused traffic congestion and shut a 1km stretch of a six-lane road for nearly a week.
“Police without any batons will go and talk and tell them they cannot do this. Protestors will be asked to move their things from the road — if not, the police will move it,” he said.
“Authorities will not make threats or attack them,” he said. “We have no plans to arrest anyone ... The word ‘disperse’ has never been used, the word ‘mob’ has never been said. I said the actions [of the protesters] were not right.”
Analysts said the prime minister’s quick switch in tactics betrayed a lack of support.
“Samak has come out of this looking very inept,” Chulalongkorn University professor Titinan Pongsudhirak said. “He got very angry for no good reason and he made a hasty decision that his coalition parties didn’t agree with and then galvanized the PAD even further.”
Thai police and the army are also reluctant to crack down on the protesters, said Taweesak Suthakavatin, a professor at the National Institute of Development Administration in Bangkok.
“They [police and soldiers] had experiences in the past when they served politicians. They still don’t have a very good image with the people. I believe senior officers will be very careful to not use violence,” Taweesak said. “The prime minister’s credibility has gone. He does not need to be on television to respond to the actions of demonstrators.”
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