Thai FM: I am being criminalised
Kasit Piromya says he will quit after being “criminalised” over airport blockades.
The police earlier said that Kasit and 35 leading members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (Pad), also known as the “Yellow Shirts”, have been called in to answer charges over last year’s blockade.
“We have issued a summons for two airport incidents,” Lieutenant-General Wut Puawes, the assistant police chief, said.
Airport siege
The November 26 – December 3 airport siege, which the Pad called its “final battle” to unseat the People’s Power Party (PPP) government, stranded more than 230,000 travellers, disrupted trade and caused economic chaos.
Pad is a grouping of academics, businessmen, royalists and urban middle-class activists opposed to ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra and the political parties he has backed from exile.
They led street protests to oust Thaksin in 2005 and 2006 and regrouped in 2008 to topple his PPP party by occupying Government House for three months and shutting down the airports.
The protesters abandoned their airport siege only after the constitutional court disbanded the former ruling pro-Thaksin party in December.
Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Democrat Party leader, won a parliamentary vote to become prime minister later that month.
Abhisit has since faced calls from Thaksin’s supporters – known as “Red Shirts” in Thailand’s colour-coded politics – to dismiss Kasit over his links to the Pad.