More than 10,000 Thai anti-government protesters marched to the office of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva early today to demand he call an election and change a military-drafted constitution, Bloomberg reported.
The so-called Red Shirt demonstrators supported the previous government linked to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 coup. The group plans more protests in 15 days if Abhisit fails to meet their demands.
"We have given notice," said Dam Soldisath, 43, one of the thousands who pushed through four police lines to reach the Government House gates in Bangkok. "If there is no election, we will be back."
The fresh protests have raised concern that the nation's economy will suffer more after demonstrations supported by Abhisit's party last year led to an eight-day closure of Bangkok's main airport. Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy will probably contract for the second straight quarter in the three months ending March, Abhisit said this past week.
Abhisit, 44, won a parliamentary vote on Dec. 15 by a majority of 37 votes in the 480-seat House of Representatives. He replaced Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in-law, whose party had tried to amend the 2007 constitution written by the military after the coup that makes it easy to dissolve political parties.
"We do what we can to accommodate their rights to express themselves," Abhisit said of the protesters in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg News in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. "But at the same time we will enforce the law."
The demonstrators demanded that Abhisit take action against the protest leaders who seized the airports last year during the peak tourism season. They also called for the removal of Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, who rallied the crowds at the airports.
The army said it was prepared to prevent any protesters from entering Government House as the People's Alliance for Democracy did in a three-month occupation last year, spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd told The Nation television station. Abhisit had visited the royalist protesters during the occupation.