Even as cops make their move, Thai protesters refuse to budge

Riot police reclaimed a thoroughfare in the capital’s government district on Friday without resistance, but backed off from confrontation elsewhere in the city and made no move against the largest protest sites at intersections in the main shopping and business areas.

‘Our mission is still going on, which is to reform the country,’ Ekkanat Promphan, the protesters’ spokesman, told reporters. ‘All protest site are still occupied by us and we will still continue our activity during the weekend.’

The protesters view Yingluck as a proxy for her elder brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a self-exiled former prime minister who clashed with the establishment before he was overthrown by the army in 2006.

They are demanding that Yingluck makes way for an appointed ‘people’s council’ to overhaul the political system and rid it of the influence of Thaksin, a telecoms billionaire they accused of using taxpayer money to buy votes with populist giveaways.

Riot police lined up on Saturday near a protest site at a government complex in north Bangkok, scene of a tense stand-off on Friday morning, but made no attempt to move in.