Thai lawmakers hold emergency session to help end crisis
Thailand's Parliament convened an emergency session yesterday at the request of the country's prime minister, who acknowledged that his administration cannot control spiralling anti-government protests.
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej People's Power Party said it plans to present a compromise in Parliament to appease the thousands of protesters occupying his official compound for a sixth day. Protest leaders say they will not back down until Samak resigns.
Samak refused to resign.
"I will not bow. I will not step down and I will not resign despite the pressure mounting on my government," Samak said during his weekly television programme before Parliament convened. "Since the government cannot resolve the problem ... the joint session of Parliament is the best choice for finding a solution."
A long, heated debate was expected with few expecting lawmakers to produce an immediate solution. Samak's six-party coalition government controls more than two-thirds of the seats in the 480-seat lower house.
The protest organisers, the People's Alliance for Democracy, accuse Samak's government of corruption and of serving as a proxy for ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed in a 2006 coup. Thaksin was banned from public office until 2012 and recently fled to self-imposed exile in Britain to escape an array of corruption charges.
Samak led Thaksin's political allies to a December 2007 election victory, and their assumption of power triggered fears that Thaksin would make a political comeback on the strength of his continued popularity with Thailand's rural majority.
Protesters say that Western-style democracy has allowed corruption to flourish and they want a new government with a parliament in which most of the lawmakers are appointed and only 30 percent elected.
Since Tuesday, protesters have been camped outside of the government's headquarters, known as Government House, turning its once manicured grounds into a muddy mess of tents, portable toilets and piles of garbage.
Samak received key backing Saturday from his six-party ruling coalition, which said it would not dissolve parliament to call new elections.
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