BANGKOK-
A state of emergency in Bangkok could be extended until anti-government protests end completely, Thailand’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, adding that he feared more violence even though calm has returned to the capital in the past few days.
Protests aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra are in their fifth month but at the weekend the remaining activists closed down several big protest sites and moved to a central Bangkok park.
The protests are led by Suthep Thaugsuban, once a senior member of the main opposition Democrat Party, which boycotted a general election last month.
“If Suthep continues with his protest and there are more violent incidents, including grenades thrown, shootings and acts of violence by provocateurs, the emergency law will have to stay until the situation improves,” Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul told reporters.
“We will wait for security forces, the army and the cabinet to decide before the emergency expires on March 22,” he said.
The government imposed the 60-day emergency in Bangkok on January 21 in a bid to contain the latest unrest in an eight-year conflict that broadly pits Bangkok’s middle class, southern Thais and the royalist establishment against mostly rural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
The protests began in November with attempts to occupy government buildings and spread in January when major roads in the capital were blocked. Those roads reopened on Monday after most of the protesters withdrew and regrouped in Lumpini Park.
The protesters have lost faith in elections, which parties of the populist Thaksin keep on winning, and want to change the political system to end the influence of the former telecoms tycoon whom they accuse of being a corrupt crony capitalist.
Thaksin has lived abroad since 2008 to avoid a jail term for a graft conviction he says was politically motivated.
Labour Minister Chalerm Yoobumrung, in charge of enforcing the state of emergency, said the protests were unlikely to end soon and the demonstrators were banking on intervention by courts widely seen as hostile to Yingluck to bring her down.
“The protests will go on for a while because Suthep has not reached his target … but I don’t believe he can reach his goal so demonstrators are waiting for some sort of intervention by independent organizations,” Chalerm told reporters.
