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Large Protests Snarl Bangkok for 2nd Day Thai Leader Vows to Keep Job Amid Protests
(about 4 hours later)
BANGKOK — Thousands of antigovernment protesters who spent the night on the streets of Bangkok’s central commercial district marched to government offices early Tuesday as part of a so-called shutdown of the city, a largely peaceful demonstration aimed at removing the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. BANGKOK — As protesters opposing elections continued their occupation of key parts of Bangkok’s main commercial and business districts, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Tuesday said she was “protecting democracy” and would not resign.
The protests, the boldest move in two months of street demonstrations, have cut off most traffic to Thailand’s costliest real estate and most prestigious addresses. Protest leaders said they would remain on the streets indefinitely. “Democracy belongs to the entire Thai people,” she said in a Twitter message, a day after the leaders of the anti-government protests began what they called a shutdown of Bangkok.
Protesters frustrated with what they say is a dysfunctional political system have issued some of the most radical political demands seen in Asia in recent years: the scrapping of elections scheduled for February, a hiatus for democracy and the formation of an alternative form of government involving an unelected “people’s council” that would replace Parliament. The leader of the protests, Suthep Thaugsuban, who has been charged by the authorities with rebellion, threatened on Tuesday to “close all government offices” if Ms. Yingluck did not step down in the coming days.
“We need to shut the capital to tell people that this government has lost its legitimacy,” Uracha Trairat, a businessman who flew from the southern island of Phuket to join the protests, said Monday. “The government is now destroying itself.” “And if she remains stubborn, we will take custody of the prime minister and all ministers,” he said to a cheering crowd at a major Bangkok intersection blocked by protesters.
The protest has echoes of a protracted demonstration in 2010 that closed off some of the same areas of Bangkok and ended with a military crackdown that left dozens of people dead. Mr. Suthep advised government ministers to “send their wives and children to somewhere so that they can escape when the emergency takes place.”
There were no reports of violence from the protest areas as of Tuesday morning, and some observers have said that the demonstrations resemble a car-free festival more than a serious threat to the government. Protesters are demanding the “eradication” from politics of Ms. Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire tycoon and former prime minister. They oppose the election scheduled for Feb. 2 on the grounds that it would provide the Shinawatra clan greater domination of the political system.
But a radical and aggressive faction of the protesters has threatened to take over the country’s stock exchange and air traffic control system if Ms. Yingluck’s government does not step down by Wednesday. In a crisis that is bewildering to many people outside Thailand, political observers say there are no angels among the leading personalities involved in the standoff. Mr. Thaksin has been accused several times of using the powers of the state – and the weight of his political party – to further his personal interests. When he was in power from 2001 to 2006 Mr. Thaksin intimidated the media and sought to control many government institutions that are meant to be independent.
In making that threat, one of the leaders of the faction, Nitithorn Lamlua, said that protest leaders had already been charged by the government with rebellion, so they “could not lose.” Mr. Suthep, a career politician and former deputy prime minister, says he is fighting to banish corruption and the Shinawatra clan. But he has been embroiled in a number of scandals himself. In addition, when he was in power in 2010 he led a crackdown against protesters that left more 90 people dead. He faces murder charges but has not appeared in court because he says he is too busy leading the protests.
“We will fight until we win,” he said. In a part of the world that has seen numerous “people power” movements calling for elections as a way of toppling authoritarian governments, the Thai standoff is radically different: Mr. Suthep and his allies in the opposition Democrat Party are fighting to stop elections that they would likely lose because of the widespread support the government has in northern Thailand.
The International Crisis Group, a research organization, said on Monday that the “scope for peaceful resolution is narrowing,” and that the campaign to stop elections “raises prospects of widespread political violence” and could provoke a military coup. The country’s polarization was highlighted in a survey of residents of northeastern Thailand that was reported in Thai media Tuesday. More than 70 percent of respondents said they planned to vote in the election and more than three quarters said they were against the shutdown of Bangkok, according to the poll, which was carried out by the Esaan Centre for Business and Economic Research at Khon Kaen University in the northeast.
“Competing Thai elites — with mass backing — disagree fundamentally about how political power should be acquired and exercised,” the group said. On Monday night, after tens of thousands of people converged on Bangkok for the protest, large crowds in several cities north of Bangkok gathered for candlelight vigils in support of elections.
During two months of demonstrations on Bangkok’s streets, protesters have raided the Finance Ministry and other key government offices, temporarily cut power to police headquarters and blocked the registration of candidates for the election. A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Marie Harf, repeated a call Monday for a strengthening of “democratic principles” in the country. She also applauded the “restraint” showed by the government toward the protesters.
Chadchart Sittipunt, the transport minister, asked protesters Monday to “think of the country” and urged them not to shut down the air traffic control office. Protest leaders and the Democrat Party, which is boycotting the election, have rejected Ms. Yingluck’s offer to discuss possibly delaying the election.
“This is going beyond the expression of opinion in a democratic way,” he said. Until this week the government had been firm that there are no provisions in the law to postpone elections.
Ms. Yingluck, who, with her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister and business tycoon living in self-imposed exile, is the target of the protests, has insisted for weeks that there is no legal avenue for postponing the elections scheduled for Feb. 2. Somchai Srisuthiyakorn, an election commissioner who has been the most vocal in his skepticism that elections can take place on time, said the country risked destruction. “Don’t claim the limitations of the law and allow the country to be destroyed,” he said.
Highlighting the split in Thailand between Bangkok and the northern parts of the country, government supporters in many provincial capitals held demonstrations on Monday in favor of the elections, holding up signs reading, “Respect My Vote.” Yet the Election Commission said it would not attend the government’s proposed forum on the issue, saying a large meeting would be unwieldy. Ms. Yingluck’s governing party on Tuesday accused the election commission of dragging its feet, “playing politics” and “opposing” the elections.
Yet one of Ms. Yingluck’s aides, Suranand Vejjajiva, was quoted on Monday by the Thai news media as saying that the government would invite “various groups,” including the protest leaders, to discuss a plea by the Election Commission to delay the voting. He called it a “sincere invitation.” In a city as vast as Bangkok, many areas were unaffected by the protests, which are concentrated in the central business district.
Many areas of the vast capital were unaffected by the protests. But many schools, universities, offices and shops selling gold were closed on Monday. Protesters retreated from at least two major intersections and in some areas the crowds were thinner than on Monday, the first day of the shutdown. But the number of protesters on the streets continued to be in the thousands. Bangkok’s largest shopping malls, which are located in the heart of the protest area, said they would close earlier than normal. The Bank of Thailand reported that 135 bank branches were either closed or had shortened their operating hours.
And in the Ratchaprasong neighborhood, which during normal times is among the most popular areas for visitors, bewildered tourists were seen trying to navigate the barriers erected by protesters. Despite the government announcing last week that thousands of soldiers had been called up to protect the capital, the presence of security forces remained very light, with protesters directing traffic in the city’s central business district.
In an apparent attempt to reassure tourists during the country’s high season, the Tourism Authority of Thailand issued a statement on Monday saying that it was “business as usual in Thailand,” and pointed out that hotels, restaurants, spas, shopping malls and hospitals, among other places, were “operating as per normal,” with only “some changes in the opening hours.” Groups of protesters marched to government offices and gathered in front of the police headquarters where they shouted that the police were “slaves” to Mr. Thaksin.
On what was a clear and unusually crisp day, protesters cheered, blew whistles and marched down streets largely devoid of vehicles. Among the most popular pictures posted on social media sites on Monday were images of empty boulevards that on a normal day would be choked with traffic.
Among the protesters Monday was Krit Satta, a computer saleswoman and cycling enthusiast who toured the business district on her bicycle.
“Bangkok has never been so empty,” she said. “Normally, you have to wait until midnight to ride free of traffic jams.”
She compared the protests to the shutdown of the United States government last year.
“We are just freezing the government from functioning,” she said. “I would like to tell the world that there’s no violence here — it’s more like a festival.”