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Thai Premier Calls for Elections, but Protests Continue Thai Premier Calls for Elections, but Protests Continue
(about 3 hours later)
BANGKOK — Facing volatile street protests and the mass resignation from Parliament of the main opposition party, Thailand’s prime minister on Monday called for fresh elections, the latest in a series of attempts to defuse anger against her political party and her powerful family. BANGKOK — A call for fresh elections by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra of Thailand on Monday failed to quell antigovernment demonstrations, as tens of thousands of protesters massed outside her office and vowed to expel her powerful family from the country.
“Let the people decide the direction of the country and who the governing majority will be,” the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, said in a televised statement on Monday morning. Ms. Yingluck’s announcement that she would “let the people decide the direction of the country” set in motion the dissolution of Parliament and the official endorsement of elections by the country’s king. A royal decree set the election for Feb. 2, more than two years before the government was expected to finish its term.
But the call for elections, which are not due until 2015, did not satisfy protest leaders who led tens of thousands of demonstrators through the streets of Bangkok on Monday. By midafternoon, the police said the number of protesters had reached well above 100,000 people. Yet leaders of antigovernment demonstrations, which have left five people dead and several hundred injured over the past two weeks, vowed to press on with their quixotic campaign to rid the country of the influence of Ms. Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, the billionaire tycoon whose policies have cemented the loyalty of voters in the most populous regions of the country.
“This is not our objective,” Anchalee Paireerak, a protest leader, said of elections. “We will continue marching.” A prominent Thai historian warned that continuing the protests despite the announcement of new elections could create “indefinite” conflict. The police said that well over 100,000 protesters filled the streets on Monday.
Although many areas of Bangkok have been unaffected by the protests, clashes have left five people dead and hundreds injured over the past two weeks. In a rambling speech to supporters, the main leader of the protest, Suthep Thaugsuban, declared a “people’s revolution” and a chance for the country to “start over.” The police, notorious for their corruption, would be replaced with “security volunteers,” he said. A new constitution would be written that would ban populist policies of the type that Mr. Thaksin has employed. And a “people’s council” would replace Parliament.
Protest leaders have called for the country’s electoral democracy to be replaced with a vaguely defined “people’s council,” a plan that has been widely derided by civic leaders and scholars as idealistic, unworkable and retrograde. While many areas of this sprawling metropolis remained peaceful and unaffected by the protests, Bangkok’s historic district, where demonstrators have gathered, witnessed budding scenes of anarchy.
According to Thai law, elections must be held by Feb. 2. But it remained unclear Monday whether the opposition would boycott them, as they have in the past. Fearing confrontation with protesters, police forces withdrew from the area, leaving demonstrators to direct tangled traffic at intersections. Trash built up on sidewalks, motorcycles ignored traffic rules even more than usual, cars triple-parked with impunity and protesters erected barriers to roads they wanted closed off.
The opposition has been deeply frustrated by its inability to win elections against the powerful political machine backed by the billionaire tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister who now lives in exile. Ms. Yingluck is Mr. Thaksin’s sister. Amid this barely controlled chaos, the way forward for Thailand remained unclear. Officials in Ms. Yingluck’s party said she would run for Parliament and would remain the party’s candidate for prime minister.
In the last elections, held in July 2011, the governing party received 15.7 million votes, compared with 11.4 million for the opposition Democrat Party. The leaders of the opposition Democrat Party, who resigned from Parliament on Sunday in a show of protest, did not indicate whether they would participate in the elections — or boycott them as they did in 2006, a move that heightened the country’s polarization and was followed by a military coup.
On Sunday, the Democrats, Thailand’s oldest party and the main force behind the country’s political opposition, announced that its members would resign from Parliament and join the antigovernment demonstrations. Because of the deep affection that the governing party has in the north and northeast of the country, scholars say, it would be very difficult for the Democrat Party to reverse its two-decade losing streak in national elections.
“We cannot beat them,” said Theptai Seanapong, one of the members of Parliament who resigned on Sunday. “It doesn’t matter if we raise our hands and feet in parliamentary votes, we will never win.” In the last elections, held in July 2011, the governing party received 15.7 million votes, compared with 11.4 million for the Democrats.
Sathit Wongnongtoey, one of the protest leaders and a former member of Parliament for the Democrat Party, said Monday that he feared there would be “cheating” in the election if the government carried on as caretakers, as is stipulated in the Constitution. Mr. Suthep, the protest leader, said that low-income Thais, many of whom support Mr. Thaksin, “had been completely fooled for 10 years.”
“And they will return to power,” Mr. Sathit said. “We cannot allow that to happen.” Although the opposition has repeatedly said that Mr. Thaksin has maintained his power by buying votes, two of Thailand’s leading political researchers wrote in an article last week that the allegation was “dangerous nonsense” because it was policies, not vote buying, that had cemented the loyalty of many voters in the provinces to Mr. Thaksin. Mr. Thaksin instituted universal health care and microloans to farmers that were very popular among rural voters.
The mistrust of electoral politics has echoes across the region — in Malaysia, where the governing party has heavily gerrymandered the electoral map, and in Cambodia, where the authoritarian prime minister, Hun Sen, has used the machinery of the state and military to bolster his power. The Cambodian opposition continues to boycott Parliament over allegations of widespread electoral fraud in July elections. But the continuing protests on Monday underlined how deeply divided the country remains seven years after the coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin.
One major difference in Thailand is that there is little dispute that Mr. Thaksin’s party has won the hearts of a majority of voters. By tailoring its policies to voters in the provinces, especially in northern Thailand, scholars say, the governing Pheu Thai Party has convincingly won every election since 2001. Mr. Thaksin, who is in exile, is described by protesters as the governing party’s puppet master.
The opposition has repeatedly said that Mr. Thaksin has maintained power through vote buying. Two of Thailand’s leading political researchers wrote a widely circulated article last week describing the allegation as “dangerous nonsense,” arguing that it was policies, not vote buying, that had cemented the loyalty of many voters in the provinces toward Mr. Thaksin. Among the heaving mass of protesters on Monday were employees of the national carrier, Thai Airways; a large contingent of graduates from the country’s most prestigious universities; members of an ascetic Buddhist sect; ultra-royalists; and many people from southern Thailand, a stronghold of the opposition.
The protests come as Thailand’s peak tourism season begins. Embassies have advised their citizens to avoid the protest areas, and more than 60 schools were closed Monday in Bangkok. “The prime minister doesn’t care about southern people,” said Nuttamon Poonsri, 33, a restaurant owner who closed her shop and pushed her baby in a stroller to the protest. “Their idea of running the country is such nonsense.”
The Democrat Party has many grievances with Mr. Thaksin’s party, including what it considers the railroading of some spending bills, voting procedures in Parliament that a court has called illegal and the furtive passage of important laws in the early hours of the morning. In a nation with one of the highest penetrations of social media usage, it was a day of countless selfies with outstretched smartphones.
Yet for a party that has long cultivated a genteel and intellectual image and advocated resolving differences inside Parliament, the decision to take to the streets was contentious within its own ranks. There were photogenic and stylishly dressed young people and haggard-looking protesters speaking southern dialects who traveled great distances to join the demonstrations. Some protesters said the political crisis has been divisive within their own families.
Still, the party’s move has parallels — and worrying similarities, some observers believe — to a move the party made seven years ago. Amid a campaign of street protests against Mr. Thaksin, then the prime minister, the Democrat Party boycotted elections in April 2006. Five months later, Mr. Thaksin was deposed in a military coup. Ainaththacha Wirujpotisontorn, a young Bangkok university graduate, said her grandparents from northern Thailand disapproved of her attending the protest. “We don’t talk about politics because it ends up with a fight,” she said.
During the current round of demonstrations, protest leaders have courted the military, and many protesters have openly called for another coup. But until now, the army chief, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, has appeared wary of intervening in the crisis. With her was a graphic designer, Suteerapat Luangsinsiri, whose office was closed so that employees could join the protest. “We know that Thailand has a lot of corruption — we tolerated it for many years,” Ms. Suteerapat said. “But it’s gone over the limit.”
A Thai newspaper, Post Today, reported on Sunday that General Prayuth had said a coup would not solve the country’s problems. “We must be patient and seek a peaceful solution,” the paper quoted him as saying. Many protesters cited the government’s program to pay rice farmers well above market prices as a major failing — and rife with corruption.
The protesters’ hope for royal intervention has also failed to be realized. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has intervened in political standoffs in the past but is now ailing, did not specifically address the protests in a speech given on his 86th birthday on Thursday. Ms. Yingluck and her government have gone out of their way to avoid confrontation with the protesters. She has pleaded with them to go home but allowed protesters to take over some government buildings, and she did not crack down when demonstrators temporarily cut off power to the police headquarters and disrupted one of the country’s biggest Internet providers.
Mr. Thaksin also appears to be going out of his way to patch up any perceived differences with the royal family. After several weeks of public silence, he posted a comment on his Facebook page on Saturday denying claims that he had ever been disloyal to the family. The protesters said Monday that they would spend the night at the gates of the prime minister’s office. Ms. Yingluck was not inside. “The government has yielded on every point,” said Surapong Tovichakchaikul, the foreign minister, who was put in charge of overseeing security during the protests.
“I would like to insist here that I’ve never even thought to reproach any member of the royal family because I received their royal graces all along,” he said. Mr. Surapong attributed the soft approach to the fact that the prime minister is a woman. “This is why it’s good to have a female prime minister,” Mr. Surapong said Monday. “If we had a male as prime minister things may have turned violent already.”
Ms. Yingluck has earned plaudits from foreign governments for her handling of the crisis in the face of aggressive moves by the protesters, who have taken over the Finance Ministry, occupied a large government complex on the outskirts of the city and temporarily cut power to a number of state-owned buildings, including the police headquarters.
The police say that the five deaths that occurred were caused by shootings among competing groups of protesters. At the height of the violent confrontations between protesters and the riot police last week, the European Union said the authorities’ actions had been “restrained and proportionate.”

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.