Thai senators vote down "blanket amnesty" bill as anti-government protests continued

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Thai senators vote down "blanket amnesty" bill as anti-government protests continued

(Xinhua) 09:12, November 15, 2013

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BANGKOK, Nov. 1 -- The Thai Senate rejected on Monday legislation to grant "blanket amnesty" to former government heads as street protests against the government under Premier Yingluck Shinawatra remained.

After legislators of the upper house had spent about 10 hours debating the legislation earlier pushed by the Pheu Thai (For Thais) Party-led government, they voted 141:0 to kill the bill seeking to exonerate, among others, former premiers Thaksin Shinawatra and Abhisit Vejjajiva and former Deputy Premier Suthep Thaugsuban.

Thaksin was sentenced in absentia by the Supreme Court to a two- year jail term on corruption charges involving a Bangkok land grab scandal and had some 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in assets confiscated while Abhisit and Suthep were charged by the Office of Attorney General for involvement in 2010's army crackdowns on Red Shirt protesters, which saw nearly 100 people killed and some 2, 000 others injured in the heart of the Thai capital.

In the face of popular protests against the bill, partners of the coalition government recently signed a joint declaration to dump it once and for all after it has been disapproved by the upper house.

Meanwhile, Suthep and members of the opposition Democrat Party continued to lead thousands of anti-government demonstrators on the street and pressed the premier to step down or dissolve the House of Representatives and call a snap election of MPs.

The former deputy premier and eight of his party colleagues resigned as lawmakers on Monday in apparent bid to intensify the massive protest against the government. He called on the demonstrators to take leave from work from Wednesday until Friday to join street protests.

The number of the street protesters grew up to thousands in the evening but obviously dwindled down to hundreds in the morning.

The ex-Democrat MPs said the government might probably revive their "blanket amnesty" bid at any given time by lodging an executive decree in place of the aborted legislation.

"We will not give up the fight until we've won because the Yingluck government no longer has the merit to stay in power," Suthep told demonstrators, many of them middle-class Bangkokians.

While Suthep's crowd gathered at Democracy Monument on Rajdamnern Avenue since last week, hundreds of others, led by the so-called Network of Students and People for Reform of Thailand and the Network of 77-Province People, demonstrated down the street at Makkawan Bridge, about 200 meters from Government House.

Barricades were set up at the bridge to block the anti- government demonstrators in a sustained stand-off with policemen armed with batons and shields.

The police might use tear gas to disperse the protesters if they crossed the barricades and moved over to Government House, laid siege around it or got inside it, according to deputy metropolitan police chief Pol Maj Gen Adul Narongsak.

The number of policemen deployed inside Government House and at spots nearby rose from about 4,000 last week to about 6,000 on Monday.

In 2008, hundreds of anti-government protesters led by the People's Alliance for Democracy, the official name of the Yellow Shirt activism, broke into Government House and occupied it during the term of former premier Somchai Wongsawat.