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 The country's police chief said the court ruling would not affect
the security operation, but added that there were no plans to retake
more protest sites after Tuesday's "Peace for Bangkok Mission" saw
the deadliest clashes since anti-government demonstrations began in
November.
Yingluck, seen by opponents as a proxy for her brother, ousted
former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, has been working from a Defence
Ministry compound in north Bangkok since the protests forced her to
vacate her Government House offices.
Protesters who want to drive her from office and eradicate Thaksin's
influence surrounded the building on Wednesday, but there were no
clashes with troops standing guard and Yingluck and other ministers
stayed away.
The Civil Court in Bangkok dismissed a case brought by protest
leaders who wanted a 60-day state of emergency announced last month
declared illegal, but added that the government was "not allowed to
use clauses in the state of emergency to disperse the protests".
The protests are the latest installment of an eight-year political
battle broadly pitting the Bangkok middle class and royalist
establishment against the mostly rural supporters of Yingluck and
Thaksin.
Problems continue to mount for Yingluck, after an anti-corruption
agency filed charges against her over a soured rice subsidy scheme
that has stoked middle-class anger and left hundreds of thousands of
farmers, her natural backers, unpaid.
Shares in Thai property developer SC Asset Corp fell more than 4
percent after protesters said they would target assets linked to her
wealthy family. The Shinawatra's own about 60 percent of SC Asset.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
The state of emergency, which covers Bangkok and surrounding
provinces, allows security agencies to impose curfews, detain
suspects without charge, censor media, ban political gatherings of
more than five people and declare areas off-limits.
"This court ruling means we can't disperse protesters but we were
never intending to anyway," national police chief Adul Saengsingkaew
told Reuters.
"We are trying to arrest people who have arrest warrants, including
leaders of the protest movement, and our strategy is to ask for
protest sites back through negotiations."
A spokesman for the military, which has said it would intervene if
police were unable to maintain security in the capital, appealed for
both sides to avoid confrontation.
"Our strategy has not changed and is still to provide support to
police," Colonel Werachon Sukondhapatipak told Reuters. "We have no
intention of deploying extra troops. If the government needs extra
help with security, it has to ask us and so far it has not asked for
reinforcements."
The military has remained aloof from the latest crisis, but has a
long history of intervening in politics.
VIOLENCE FLARED
Violence flared on Tuesday as police made their most determined
effort since the start of the protests to reclaim sites around
government buildings occupied for weeks. One police officer and four
protesters were killed by gunfire.
Police said they came under attack from gunfire and grenades.
Protest leaders accused police of opening fire on demonstrators.
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Tarit Pengdith, head of the Department of Special Investigation,
Thailand's equivalent of the FBI, insisted on Wednesday that
security forces had not used live ammunition.
"The pictures you saw of police holding guns, those guns are used to
fire rubber bullets only," he told a news conference.
News footage from the protests mostly showed police using shotguns
that can fire rubber bullets. A few officers also carried
military-style rifles, although it was unclear from footage whether
these were fired.
Thai politics has been gripped by growing paralysis since Yingluck
called a snap election in December.
Disruption by protesters meant voting could not be completed in the
February 2 poll, leaving Yingluck at the head of an enfeebled
caretaker administration amid uncertainty over when a new government
can be installed.
The Election Commission said it would try to hold elections on March
2 in five provinces where voting was disrupted. The commission will
ask the Constitutional Court to rule on what to do with 28 districts
in the south where candidates were unable to register.
Demonstrators accuse Yingluck's billionaire brother Thaksin of
nepotism and corruption and say that, prior to being toppled in a
2006 coup, he used taxpayers' money for populist subsidies and easy
loans that have bought him the loyalty of millions in the populous
north and northeast.
The protesters, who are still blocking major intersections in
central Bangkok, want to suspend what they say is a fragile
democracy under Thaksin's control and eliminate his influence by
altering electoral arrangements.
Adding to the crisis, a flagship rice program that paid farmers way
above the market rate has proved ruinously expensive and the
caretaker government lacks the power to keep funding it.
A state bank had to cancel a loan that might have helped prop up the
scheme in the face of a revolt by depositors who began pulling their
money out.
Three Government Savings Bank branches in Bangkok contacted by
Reuters on Wednesday morning said they were no longer seeing unusual
numbers of customers withdrawing funds.
Thailand's anti-corruption body began an investigation last month
into the rice scheme and said on Tuesday it was filing charges
against Yingluck. She was summoned to hear the charges on February
27.
(Writing by Alex Richardson; editing by Alan Raybould and Robert
Birsel)
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