Tearful Thai PM urges protesters to take part in election

BANGKOK: Her eyes welling with tears, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pleaded on today for anti-government demonstrators to clear the streets and support a snap election, but defiant protest leaders called for her to step down within 24 hours.
After weeks of sometimes violent street rallies, protesters rejected her call yesterday for a general election and said she should be replaced by an unelected “people’s council”, a proposal that has stoked concern Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy may abandon the democratic process.
Yingluck said she would continue her duties as caretaker prime minister until the election, which is set for February 2. Today she held a cabinet meeting at an army club. “Now that the government has dissolved parliament, I ask that you stop protesting and that all sides work towards elections,” Yingluck told reporters as she went in.
“I have backed down to the point where I don’t know how to back down any further.”
Tears briefly formed in her eyes as she spoke, before she quickly composed herself – perhaps a glimpse of the emotional toll she has faced from weeks of protests.
Yingluck, a 46-year-old former businesswoman, had no political experience before entering a 2011 election that she won by a landslide, largely on the back of rural support.
The protesters, a motley collection aligned with Bangkok’s royalist elite, want to oust Yingluck and eradicate the influence of her brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled by the military in 2006 and has chosen to live in exile rather than serve a jail term for abuse of power. This is the latest flare-up in almost a decade of rivalry between forces aligned with the Bangkok-based establishment and those who support Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon who won huge support in the countryside with pro-poor policies.
An estimated 3,000 protesters camped out overnight around Government House, where Yingluck’s office is located, a day after 160,000 protesters converged peacefully on the complex. They made no attempt to get into the grounds, which appeared to be defended by unarmed police and soldiers. The crowd could swell again on today, a public holiday in Thailand for Constitution Day. (Agencies)