BANGKOK, March 2 (Reuters) – Thailand is holding elections
on Sunday in five provinces where voting was disrupted in last
month’s poll by anti-government protesters trying to unseat
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
Election re-runs planned for April in other provinces have
been suspended pending a court decision on procedures.
Voting was disrupted in 18 percent of constituencies, 69 out
of 375, nationwide, the Election Commission said, affecting 18
of 77 provinces.
The demonstrators, who have blocked intersections in the
capital for weeks, say Yingluck must resign and make way for an
appointed “people’s council” to overhaul a political system they
say has been taken hostage by her billionaire brother and former
premier, Thaksin Shinawatra.
The election is almost certain to return Yingluck to power,
thanks to her support base in the largely rural north and
northeast, a result the opposition will never accept.
The result cannot change the dysfunctional status quo in a
country popular among tourists and investors yet blighted by
eight years of polarisation and turmoil, pitting the
Bangkok-based middle class and royalist establishment against
the mostly poor, rural supporters of the Shinawatra family.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban’s supporters were due to
abandon their protest sites on Sunday and move to central
Lumpini Park, where many protesters already sleep in tents near
an established protest stage on the edge of the Silom financial
district.
“For those who worried that I may give up, I can reassure
that an old man like me does not know how to give up,” Suthep
said on Saturday, in reference to the scaled-down protest.
“That’s because there are millions of people who support me
… This is not a move to retreat, but it is an adjustment in
our manoeuvre for fighting,” he said.
Protest numbers have dwindled amid attacks on various camps
with grenades and guns. Three people were killed when a grenade
was thrown into a busy shopping area near one camp last Sunday.
In total, 20 people have been killed in protest-related
violence in Bangkok since Nov. 30 and three in the eastern
province of Trat.
(Reporting by Khettiya Jittapong; Writing by Nick Macfie;
Editing by Paul Tait)
