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Thai govt rejects protesters' calls to quit
AFP - Monday, February 2
BANGKOK (AFP) - - Thailand's deputy prime minister on Sunday rejected an ultimatum by thousands of protesters demanding the government step down, raising the prospect of more rallies in the turmoil-wracked kingdom.
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Suthep Thaugsuban, one of three deputy prime ministers, said supporters of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra were free to repeat Saturday's mass rally, but insisted the new Democrat Party-led government would stay in office.
"This is not the time for the dissolution of parliament -- people want the government to go ahead with administering the country," he told reporters.
About 30,000 Thaksin sympathisers clad in their signature red shirts and waving banners reading "Bring Back Democracy" marched to the prime minister's Government House offices in Bangkok late Saturday before dispersing.
Their main targets are figures in the six-week-old government who are linked to the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a royalist group whose protest campaign last year helped topple the previous Thaksin-linked ruling party.
The so-called "Red Shirts" on Saturday forced their way through several roadblocks manned by baton-wielding police and soldiers, as prolonged political tensions between deeply divided factions showed no sign of ending.
Protest leaders say they will return to the streets in 15 days unless Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya and other figures linked to the PAD blockade late last year of Bangkok's two airports resign and are prosecuted.
They are also calling for the dissolution of parliament, new elections and the reinstatement of the 1997 constitution.
"The next rally will be bigger and it will not be a one-day protest -- we will stay until we know who wins and who loses," anti-government organiser Shinawat Haboonpad told AFP.
Suthep said it was impossible to reinstate the previous constitution within 15 days, and praised Kasit as doing a "good job."
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland when protesters took to the streets to denounce his government, and upon his return Sunday assured people he was committed to justice.
"I said several times that some of their requests are in the process," he told reporters at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport.
"Legal action against the PAD is being processed. Political reform is under the process of discussion. People are allowed different opinions."
Government House was occupied for three months last year by the Red Shirts' rivals in the yellow-clad PAD, whose leaders opposed links between the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and Thaksin. The PPP was elected in December 2007.
The PAD campaign peaked in late November when it occupied Bangkok's airports, a crippling siege which only ended when a court on December 2 dissolved the PPP, allowing the Democrat Party to fill the void in a parliamentary vote.
Supporters of the PPP and twice-elected Thaksin -- who despite being overthrown in a 2006 coup and living abroad still wields great influence -- decry the move as a "silent coup" and feel robbed of their democratic rights.
Abhisit further enraged the Red Shirts with the appointment of Kasit, a vocal PAD supporter, as foreign minister, while two other PAD sympathisers have been selected as government advisers.
So far, no one has been arrested, charged or prosecuted over the eight-day-long airport blockades.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, said the Red Shirts still faced organisational, leadership and financial challenges, but said they appeared to be preparing for the long-haul.
"They will imitate what the PAD did last year... yesterday's (Saturday's) ultimatum puts us on another course of brinkmanship," he told AFP.
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