Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has called on anti-government demonstrators to cease their protests and hold dialogue to avert street confrontations.
In a televised address a few hours after easily winning a confidence vote in parliament, she said the rallies were hurting the economy and urged her opponents to agree to join a panel to find a way out.
"The government doesn't want to enter into any political games because we believe it will cause the economy to deteriorate," she said.
However, anti-government protesters show no signs of standing down, although their numbers appeared to have dwindled since the beginning of the week.
A police spokesman said the "main force" of anti-government protesters in Bangkok was now less than about 15,000, down from at least 100,000 on Sunday.
But the total fluctuates through the day and into the evening.
The protesters have been mostly peaceful but in an effort to step up pressure, they cut electricity at the national police headquarters and an adjacent police hospital, forcing police to use a generator.
The anti-government campaign started last month after the prime minister’s ruling Puea Thai Party tried to pass an amnesty bill that critics said was designed to absolve her brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, of a 2008 graft conviction.
Though the bid to push the amnesty through parliament was dropped, his enemies, broadly aligned with Bangkok's royalist civilian and military elite, are now trying to force out his sister's government.
The demonstrators accuse the prime minister of being an illegitimate proxy for her billionaire brother, a populist hero of the rural poor who was ousted in a 2006 military coup.
Despite fleeing into exile to dodge a jail sentence for abuse of power, the former telecommunications mogul remains a force in Thai politics, sometimes holding cabinet meetings via Skype from his villa in Dubai.
