BANGKOK—Over 100,000 people protested in a historic area of Bangkok Sunday as part of a bid to end the grip that former ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has on Thailand’s volatile politics.
Police estimated that 100,000 people, mostly Bangkok residents, attended the rally. Protesters blew whistles and listened to speeches by representatives of numerous groups who joined the protest at the Democracy Monument.
A spokesman for the rally, Ekkanat Prompan, estimated a higher attendance than the police. He estimated that 400,000 people had joined the anti-government rally by the afternoon and that more were expected to join, the Bangkok Post reported.
Various rallies have been ongoing in Bangkok for much of November, initially to protest an amnesty bill that the democratically elected government led by Thaksin’s younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra tried to pass.
The protesters said the bill would have allowed her exiled billionaire brother to return from self-imposed exile and avoid a 2008 corruption charge. The bill was quashed but the rallies shifted their focus to toppling Yingluck’s administration, which protesters said is controlled by Thaksin from afar.
Ning, a 31-year-old who works in the financial sector and who attended Sunday’s rally, said she was protesting because she could no longer tolerate Thaksin’s system.
“Even though this party came into power through elections, the current administration only benefits itself. It has done nothing for the people,” she said.
An Ousted Prime Minister
Thaksin was Thailand’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006 when he was ousted by a military coup that came on the heels of mass demonstrations by yellow-shirt protesters who consisted chiefly of middle-class Bangkok residents and royalists.
Despite being in exile, Thaksin continued to have a large rural support base that voted in his sister and the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party into power in 2011.
Thaksin also has strong support from the red-shirt movement, which is predominantly made up of rural poor from the north and northeast of Thailand. In the past the red shirts have been involved in violent street protests, most notably during April and May 2010 when they occupied a commercial area of Bangkok for one month. By the time the military had forcefully cleared the red shirts from their barricaded camp, over 90 people had been killed and scores of buildings were set ablaze.
Approximately 40,000 red shirts on Sunday held a counter-rally at a Bangkok sports stadium. One the red shirt leaders, Nattawut Saikuar—who is also a Yingluck government minister—promised they would not confront the anti-government supporters, reported the Bangkok Post.
