Temporary halt to people's campaign against Thai PM

Bangkok, Mar 30: A people's campaign against caretaker Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been temporarily suspended after a big show of strength last night that caused traffic gridlocks and a business stoppage in the Capital's commerce district.

The leaders of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), an umbrella group of pro-democracy civil society groups, NGOs and rights activists, have decided to resume their over two-month-old campaign on April 7 after this weekend's snap national election.

Tens of thousands of PAD supporters rallied till late last night in front of Bangkok's newest and biggest shopping mall demanding that Mr Thaksin quit to make way for the installation of a neutral administration to supervise constitutional reform.

Protest organisers said they were suspending the campaign to allow people to exercise their franchise during the April 2 snap polls announced late February by the embattled Mr Thaksin, three years ahead of the scheduled election date.

The PAD is, however, urging voters to mark the ''no-vote'' box on the ballot paper on April 2.

The three main Thai opposition parties are boycotting the snap elections and question the caretaker premier's sincerity to constitutional reform which he has promised to initiate after the polls.

Opposition parties and the PAD want basic changes in Thailand's 1997 Constitution to ensure institutional checks on an unprecedentedly strong executive under Mr Thaksin.

Both opposition parties and the PAD have appealed to Thailand's revered King to install a neutral government to initiate the constitutional reform.

Mr Thaksin, who led the country's first democratically elected single party majority government for the past five years, has been at the centre of a political storm since the tax-free 1.9 billion US dollar sale of his family telecom business to a Singapore state company in late January.

Opposition parties and civil society groups have also slammed the deal for placing strategic national assets in foreign hands.

UNI