'Democracy' group plans rally
A day after the government moved to lift martial law in Bangkok, a pressure group linked to deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra threatened to organise a mass protest to demand a general election be held within 90 days.
Chanapat na Nakhon, chairman of the Democracy Lovers Network, said yesterday it would stage a big protest at Democracy Monument on December 10, which is Democracy Day.He said it would include labourers from Bangkok and farmers from 10 provinces in the Northeast, five provinces in the South and six in the North. The activist said he expected at least 30,000 people to take part. He denied that his group was pro-Thaksin Shinawatra, saying that some members of the group were "duped" once by the Thaksin government but those people had since left the group. "We are purely democracy lovers and we want to restore democracy to the country,'' he said. In the past, however, Chanapat led public rallies in support of the ousted PM and his administration. Early this month, he led a rally of some 200 people in memory of "brave taxi driver" Nuamthong Praiwal, who slammed his taxi into a tank at the Royal Plaza shortly after the coup. The cabbie later hanged himself from a pedestrian flyover in a fatal protest against the coup. The Nation
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