Prime minister of Thailand calls for early elections

BANGKOK — Desperate to defuse Thailand’s deepening political crisis, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved Parliament’s lower house Monday and called early elections. But protesters seeking to topple her vowed to carry on their fight, saying they cannot win the polls because of corruption.

A decree from King Bhumibol Adulyadej scheduled the elections on Feb. 2 and named Yingluck as interim prime minister until then. The protesters demanded that she resign as caretaker and rejected the election date, putting the royalist movement at odds with the royal decree.

Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, who faces an arrest warrant on insurrection charges, spoke to more than 150,000 followers outside Yingluck’s offices, challenging authorities to “come get me!”

He contended that his movement was assuming some functions of government, citing a clause in the constitution stating that “the highest power is the sovereign power of the people.”

“This means that from now on the people will appoint the prime minister of the people and appoint the government of the people,” he told the cheering crowd.

He said a new prime minister and a nonelected “people’s council” — which has no basis in the constitution — would work to end corruption in politics and keep Yingluck and her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, from returning to power.

The opposition Democrat Party, allied with the protest movement, has been defeated by Thaksin-allied parties in every election since 2001 and is unlikely to win the new polls.

Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire, was toppled by a 2006 military coup that laid bare a deeper conflict between Thailand’s elite and largely urban middle class on one side and Thaksin’s power base in the countryside on the other. That base benefited from his populist policies intended to win over the rural poor.

The two sides have been dueling for power, sometimes violently, since Thaksin was ousted because of allegations of corruption and abuse of power.

After Yingluck called the elections, the United States said in a statement that it supports the democratic process in Thailand, a longtime friend and ally.