Supporters of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed on Wednesday to resume their street campaign for new elections in 2009, suggesting no respite from a long-running political crisis as a recession looms. In a sign of the strife to come, leaders of the pro-Thaksin camp warned they may target a regional summit in Bangkok in February to pile pressure on the weeks-old government led by former opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva.
"We are discussing among DAAD leaders that we will protest against the government again after the New Year holidays," Veera Musikapong, leader of Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD), told reporters. "Our demand is the same, a dissolution of the house," Veera said after thousands of red-shirted demonstrators ended a two-day blockade of parliament.
The siege forced Abhisit, an Oxford-educated economist and the country's fourth prime minister in 2008, to change the venue of his maiden policy speech. The DAAD, which this week took a page from the playbook of the yellow-shirted People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) that led a months-old street campaign against the previous pro-Thaksin government, has rejected Abhisit's calls for national unity. They accuse the 44-year-old leader of being in an unholy alliance with the army and the PAD, which seized Bangkok's main airports last month, a charge he denies.
Thai newspapers said the outlook for political stability remained bleak as long as the rift between Bangkok's royalist and business elite, who accused Thaksin of corruption, and rural voters who loved his populist policies, remains unresolved. "The point of negotiation has passed," Matichon said, comparing the country's politics to a paralysing illness. "There is a chance that this disease will develop and cause death if we don't cure it or find the right cure," it said.
THAKSIN RETURN? Thaksin, who fled into exile before his conviction this year on conflict of interest charges, continues to loom large more than two years after he was removed in a bloodless coup. In his latest interview with a magazine in the Middle East, which was widely quoted in the Thai press on Wednesday, Thaksin said he would like to return and lead the government again.
Abhisit, who has said Thaksin can return as long as he respected the justice system, said on Tuesday the political chaos could push the country in recession despite his government's planned $8.6 billion stimulus package. "These conflicts are the country's weakness, especially at a time when the world economy is entering its worst crisis in a century," he told legislators.
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