Asia-Pacific

Thai premier says won’t step down

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Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra says she will not quit ahead of the upcoming elections, urging anti-government protesters to stop demonstrations.

Bangkok has been the scene of mass opposition protests against the government over the past few weeks.

Demonstrators say Yingluck’s older brother, ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, is the power behind the current government.

On Monday, Yingluck called an early election and announced the dissolution of the parliament in an attempt to calm the situation in the country.

However, she said her cabinet was legally-bound to act as an interim government until the elections are held on February 2, 2014. On November 28, Yingluck survived a no-confidence vote in parliament, with 297 lawmakers voting in her favor and 134 against.

“I would like the protesters to stop and to use the electoral system to choose who will become the next government,” she told reporters on Tuesday.

Some 140,000 people took to the streets in the capital, Bangkok on Monday, calling for the elected government to resign. Demonstrators also want her family be removed from power.

“I have retreated as far as I can – give me some fairness,” Yingluck stated.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban is against holding elections and has issued an ultimatum urging Yingluck and her colleagues to resign from the caretaker government.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democrat Party – whose lawmakers stepped down en masse on Sunday – said they had not yet decided whether to participate in the upcoming elections.

The anti-government campaign began after on October 31 the government proposed an amnesty bill that could have extended a pardon to Thaksin and paved the way for his return to the country.

The telecommunications tycoon, who was ousted in a 2006 coup, has lived in a self-imposed exile since 2008. He has been sentenced to corruption and will face a two-year prison term if he returns.

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