Riot police, protesters clash
2008-08-27 07:28
Bangkok - Thousands of demonstrators occupying the Thai prime minister's office compound beat back an effort by riot police to remove them on Wednesday and vowed to stay until the government resigns.
Police, meanwhile, said they will seek arrest warrants for eight protest leaders from the People's Alliance for Democracy as well as a court order to force the protesters to leave the compound known as Government House.
Alliance protesters, who accuse Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej of corruption and of being a proxy for his disgraced predecessor, have camped in a huge garden outside Government House offices in since scaling fences there on Tuesday afternoon. They have remained peaceful and have not tried to enter any government buildings.
About 500 helmeted riot police forced their way into the compound overnight, briefly clashing with protesters. But the police later backed off from the confrontation, while establishing themselves inside the compound and mingling with protesters at the perimeter.
The early morning clash did nothing to shake the resolve of the protest organisers. The alliance accuses Samak of being too close to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and faces several pending corruption cases. Thaksin is in self-exile in Britain.
"If we leave before this government resigns, that means we are defeated," Chamlong Srimuang, one of the protest leaders, told the crowd inside the compound.
The alliance, which is loosely aligned with conservative factions of the monarchy and the military, said the protests and the seizure on Tuesday of a state-run television station by a mob of their masked security enforcers were a "final showdown" in efforts to oust the government.
The takeover of the Government House compound was the latest twist in a political crisis that began in early 2006, when critics of Thaksin established the alliance to force him from office over allegations of corruption and abuse of power.
In September 2006, the military deposed Thaksin in a bloodless coup while he was abroad. His party was dissolved and he was banned from public office until 2012.
But Samak led Thaksin's political allies to a December 2007 election victory, and their assumption of power triggered fears of a political comeback of Thaksin, who remains popular with the country's rural majority.
The alliance responded by resuming their protests in May, accusing Samak of trying to amend the constitution to Thaksin from a string of corruption charges.
Thaksin skipped bail ahead of his latest corruption trial and went to England, contending he can't get a fair trial in Thailand.
- AP