Red shirts vow to continue protests

“We are also contemplating a march to the 11th Battalion to ask Abhisit and the army he is hiding behind for an answer,” Nattawut Saikua, another red shirt leader, said, referring to the army barracks where Abhisit has largely been based since the protests began.

It could could take months for prosecutors and the constitutional court to act on the election commission’s recommendation.

“The case will be forwarded to the state attorney, and then the state attorney decides whether to forward it to the constutional court,” Panitan Wattanayagorn, a Thai government spokesman, told Al Jazeera.

“The Democrat Party should defend itself in the constitutional court as it has successfully a few months ago.”

The case centres on an allegedly illegal multimillion-dollar donation to the party during the national election campaign in 2005, when Abhisit was its deputy leader.

If a court finds that the party acted illegally, the Democrats, the country’s oldest party, could be disbanded and senior party members banned for politics for several years.

Abhisit under pressure

Abhisit is also under pressure from the military after General Anupong Paochinda, the army chief, said that it might be necessary to dissolve parliament to resolve the country’s political crisis.

“If the issue cannot be resolved through political means, then parliament dissolution seems to be a reasonable step,” he said a joint news conference with the deputy prime minister on Monday.

“I just want peace to prevail.”

It was the first public comment on the deadlock by the head of the powerful army after security forces failed on Saturday to remove the red shirts from their base in central Bangkok.

“Pressure is mounting on Abhisit,” Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, reporting from Bangkok, said.
 
“He’s trying to allay fears that the army would step into the political void. In the last 18 years, the military stepped in with 18 military coups – when there has been a political stalemate the army tends to step in.”