Thai PM will not quit, protest set to drag on

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej will not resign, a spokesman said yesterday as thousands of protesters besieged his office, vowing to stay until they forced the government from power.

"It's impossible that Prime Minister Samak will resign," said Kuthep Saikrajang, spokesman for the People Power Party (PPP) that leads a six-party coalition whose election in December was hoped to restore political stability two years after a coup.

"The standpoint of our party is that the government will not resign and there will be no house dissolution," Kuthep said, responding to a newspaper report that the country's army chief had urged Samak to dissolve parliament to end the protests.

Asked how he planned to deal with the demonstrators, Samak, who met some of the 19 police officers injured in Friday's scuffles with the marchers, told reporters to wait for his weekly radio and television address today.

Samak, a firebrand politician who won millions of rural votes on a pledge to revive the populist policies of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, triggered coup fears last month when he vowed to smash the four-week campaign.

Samak, 73, later backed off when the police and military made it clear they had no stomach for a fight.

Yesterday, thousands of mainly middle-class Bangkok residents were camped outside the ornate iron fence surrounding Government House after they were allowed to pass through lines of riot police on Friday to avoid violence.

The atmosphere was jovial with the crowd clapping and cheering speakers on a hastily erected stage as police looked on. Vendors were doing a brisk trade in umbrellas and fans as people sought relief from the sun.

"I don't know what will happen in the next one or two days, but our mission is still the same," said retired general Chamlong Srimuang, a co-leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) comprising academics, royalists and businessmen.

"We came here to tell them to get out," said the shaven-headed ascetic Buddhist who helped lead the PAD's street protests that ended with the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a bloodless 2006 coup.

With the election in December of an avowedly pro-Thaksin government, it was only a matter of time before the PAD renewed its crusade, which it paints as a life-and-death struggle between monarchists and republicans.