Tens of thousands of protesters converged on Bangkok's shopping district, forcing major retailers to close. The protestors are accusing authorities of neglecting the poor on the 21st day of a mass rally seeking snap elections.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's embattled government deployed 50,000 soldiers, police and other security personnel in the city after caravans of the anti-government, red-shirted protesters travelled from rural areas to the Thai capital.
At least half a dozen shopping malls including Central World - the second-largest shopping complex in southeast Asia - shut their doors in response to protests and threats by the ‘red shirts’ to stay overnight in the usually bustling area popular with tourists and Bangkok's wealthier residents.
‘We cannot let Mr Abhisit rule the country any longer,"’ Jatuporn Prompan, a ‘red shirt’ leader, told the crowd.
‘It is time for the under privileged to liberate themselves from the oppression made by the elite-backed government. It is time for the elite-supported government to dissolve parliament.’
Thousands also rallied outside state-controlled broadcasters Radio Thailand and Channel 11, accusing them of bias.
Backed by Thailand's powerful military and royalist establishment, Mr Abhisit has said a peaceful poll now would be difficult given the tensions and has offered to dissolve parliament in December, a year early.
The mostly rural and urban poor protesters are demanding immediate elections and threatening more protests in coming days, extending a mass street rally that began on 14 March when up to 150,000 ‘red shirts’ converged on Bangkok's old quarter.
Adding to the tension, more than 1,000 people who oppose the protesters held their own rally yesterday, donning pink shirts and saying the ‘red shirts’ were unreasonable.
The ‘red shirts’, supporters of twice-elected and now fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, say Mr Abhisit has no popular mandate and came to power illegitimately, heading a coalition the military cobbled together after courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin party that led the previous government.
Mr Abhisit counters that he was voted into office by the same parliament that picked his two Thaksin-allied predecessors.
Mr Thaksin was widely seen as authoritarian and corrupt before his ouster in a 2006 coup, but remains a powerful symbol as the first Thai civilian leader to reach out to the poor in his 2001 election campaign with populist policies such as cheap loans.
Analysts say regardless of the outcome, the mass rallies mark a turning point in a country where the richest 20% of the population earn about 55% of the income while the poorest fifth get 4%, according to a November World Bank study. That income disparity is among Asia's widest, it showed.
