BANGKOK: Grenades were thrown at the offices of Thailand’s anticorruption agency, which has summoned the prime minister to answer charges of dereliction of duty next week, as protesters trying to oust her prepared for a big weekend rally.
Nobody was injured in the overnight attack, the second on the agency’s offices this week, police said yesterday. It was not clear who threw the grenades. Supporters of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra have been demonstrating at the building this week.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission is examining the alleged failure of Yingluck to stop corruption and stem huge losses in a government rice-buying programme.
It is widely expected to recommend her impeachment by the Senate. If the Senate takes up the case, Yingluck will have to step aside, with a deputy prime minister expected to take over. If she is found guilty by the Senate, she has to step down.
Her supporters, who have been restrained during five months of antigovernment protests in the capital, are starting to mobilise and are planning their own big rally, or series of rallies, on April 5.
Anti-government demonstrators resumed street protests on Monday after lying low for weeks. Their rally on Saturday is expected to draw up to 50,000 people Paradorn Pattanathabutr, a security adviser to the prime minister, said.
“We don’t expect any violence at the rally but provocateurs might try to stir trouble to discredit the government side,” Paradorn said.
Thailand has been in crisis since former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother, was ousted in a 2006 coup. The conflict broadly pits the Bangkok-based middle class and royalist establishment against the mostly poorer, rural supporters of the Shinawatras.
The turmoil entered a fresh phase in November, when anti-government protesters first took to the streets, with 23 people killed during the political violence over the following months
The protesters disrupted a general election on February 2 and the ballot was annulled by the Constitutional Court this month.
Reuters
