Thai opposition keeps up pressure after PM Yingluck ousted

Thai police fired tear gas Friday at royalist protesters bent on bringing down a caretaker government after a court threw Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of office. The protesters want the government out, a coming election postponed and reforms to end the influence of Yingluck's brother, former Premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Rival protesters are expected in the capital over the weekend, raising fears of trouble. Both sides have armed activists in their ranks. Twenty-five people have been killed since the anti-government protests began in November.

An anti-graft agency indicted Yingluck for negligence Thursday in connection with a rice subsidy program, under which the state paid farmers far above market prices for their crops.

However, Yingluck's Puea Thai Party still runs the interim government and is hoping to organize a July 20 election that it would probably win, largely thanks to support from farmers and other lower-income people in the country’s north and northeast. The anti-government protesters draw much of their support from Bangkok’s elite and the southern part of Thailand.

Tens of thousands of the Shinawatras' "Red Shirt" supporters, angered by Yingluck's ouster, are also on their way to Bangkok for a rally on Saturday. They are clinging to the hope that the interim government will win the July election and bring the Shinawatras' party back to power.

About 21,000 police and troops have been deployed in the capital, authorities said, but there was little security presence on the streets Friday.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, speaking to supporters in a city park, urged them to rally outside parliament, the prime minister's offices and five television stations to prevent those facilities from being used by the government.

"We will sweep the debris of the Thaksin regime out of the country," said Suthep, a former deputy premier in a government run by the pro-establishment Democrat Party.

By midmorning, Suthep had led one group of flag-waving protesters to Government House, the official offices of the prime minister, which have been empty since January. He said protesters would camp outside overnight.

Trouble flared at another protest site when police fired tear gas at a crowd of several hundred people attempting to force their way into a police compound housing a government security group in the north of Bangkok.

The Erawan Medical Center, which monitors hospitals, said four protesters were taken to hospitals after inhaling tear gas.

"That puppet Yingluck is gone, but our work is not over," Pornprasert Chernalom, 39, who owns a small business in Samut Sakhon province, west of Bangkok, said earlier.

"The illegitimate Thaksin Cabinet remains in power,” he said. “Our next step is to give power back to the people."

Some protesters held pictures of Thaksin and Yingluck with their faces crossed out. Others held banners that read: "Love Thailand, eradicate the Thaksin regime."

Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon, is vilified by his enemies in the royalist establishment as a corrupt crony capitalist. But he won the unswerving loyalty of legions of rural and urban poor with populist policies when he was prime minister from 2001 until he was ousted in a 2006 coup.

He lives in exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for abuse of power, but he is widely believed to have had a strong influence on his sister's government. Thaksin or his loyalists have won every election since 2001.

More trouble would deepen worry about Southeast Asia's second-largest economy, which is already teetering on the brink of recession amid weak exports, a yearlong slump in industrial output and a drop in tourism, presided over by a caretaker government with curtailed powers.

Reuters