Thousands of royalist protesters fanned out across Thailand's capital on Friday to try to bring down a caretaker government after a court threw Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of office and an anti-graft agency indicted her for negligence, according to the Associated Press.
Yingluck's Puea Thai Party still runs the interim government and is hoping to organize a July 20 election that it would probably win, but the protesters want the government out, the election postponed and reforms to end the influence of Yingluck's brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, the AP reported.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, speaking to supporters in a city park, urged them to rally outside parliament, the prime minister's offices and five television stations to prevent them being used by the government, according to the AP.
"We will sweep the debris of the Thaksin regime out of the country," said Suthep, a former deputy premier in a government run by the pro-establishment Democrat party, the AP reported.
Thaksin is vilified by his enemies as a corrupt crony capitalist. But he won the unswerving loyalty of legions of rural and urban poor with populist policies when he was prime minister from 2001 until he was ousted in a 2006 coup, according to the AP.
He currently lives in exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for abuse of power but has been the guiding hand behind his sister's government, the AP reported.
Protesters waving red, white and blue Thai flags later set off from the park for rally sites, most in Bangkok's historic quarter, according to the AP.
Tens of thousands of the Shinawatras' "red shirt" supporters, angered by Yingluck's ousting, are also on their way to Bangkok for a rally on Saturday, the AP reported. They are clinging to the hope that the interim government will win the July election and bring the Shinawatras' party back to power.
