Facing large protests and calls for her resignation, embattled Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved parliament on Monday to pave the way for fresh elections that she will likely win again.
But with Yellow Shirt demonstrators repeatedly rejecting offers for a return to the polls, this move is unlikely to placate the hordes seeking to oust Thailand’s first female Premier.
On Monday, the eerie calm that reigned in Bangkok over the King’s birthday on Dec. 5 melted away, as protesters redoubled their efforts to rid the country of Yingluck and the political influence of her family.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban was in typically bombastic form, calling for a “final push” starting at 9:39 a.m. (the Thai word for nine is a homonym for “go forward”). On Sunday, all 153 of his former lawmaker colleagues in the opposition Democrat Party resigned to join the protests.
“We’ve been waiting for the government to show its responsibility and return power to the people so the country can start afresh,” Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva told assembled media. In place of the government 15 million Thais elected in a landslide in July 2011, he advocates a “people’s council” of appointed “good people” to lead the Southeast Asian nation. The proposal underscores the political gulf between the Thaksin family’s Red Shirt supporters — largely the rural poor — and the Yellow Shirt backers of the ironically named Democrat Party, who are mostly royalists, aristocrats and urban elites, Time World informs.
