Thailand’s army chief told the elected government on Wednesday to step down and call a snap election as a way out of a deepening political crisis, but a government spokesperson rejected the call.
Army chief Anupong Paochinda reiterated that he would not launch a coup only two years after the military’s removal of Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister.
At a news conference in Bangkok, he also told the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protest movement to withdraw from Bangkok’s international airport and cease its anti-government campaign.
”The prime minister should dissolve Parliament and call a snap election,” Anupong said in outlining a four-point plan to end the country’s long-running political crisis.
Government spokesperson Nattawut Saikuar rejected the army chief’s plea. ”The prime minister has said many times that he will not quit or dissolve Parliament, because he has been democratically elected. That still stands,” he told Channel 3 television.
There was no immediate reaction from the PAD, which began a ”final push” on Monday to unseat the administration, blockading Bangkok’s main airport and causing flights to be cancelled on Wednesday.
Somchai, whom the PAD accuse of being a puppet of Thaksin, his brother-in-law, is due to return from an Asia-Pacific summit in Peru later on Wednesday.
His flight has been rerouted and his handlers are not revealing his destination. Thai media reports speculated he may declare a state of emergency in Bangkok.
Earlier, protest leader Sondhi Limthongul rejected a government offer of talks to end the PAD’s blockade of the airport, where thousands of angry travellers were left stranded.
”You must quit first before we sit down and talk with you,” he told cheering supporters at the airport, repeating the PAD’s demand that Somchai resign.
After masked PAD members stepped up their action by breaking into the control tower at Suvarnabhumi airport, a rival pro-government group said it would launch its own street action, raising the prospect of clashes.
”What they have done are terrorist acts,” Jatuporn Prompan, a ruling party politician and leader of the anti-PAD Democratic Alliance against Dictatorship, told a news conference. — Reuters