Thai protesters try to prevent voting

Bangkok Metropolitan officials guard ballot boxes before placing them at polling stations during an advance voting in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014. Anti-government demonstrators trying to derail a contentious general election scheduled next week in the country swarmed dozens of polling stations Sunday, chaining doors and gates shut and blocking hundreds of thousands of voters from casting advance ballots in the latest blow to the country's increasingly embattled government. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)
Bangkok Metropolitan officials guard ballot boxes before placing them at polling stations during an advance voting in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014. Anti-government demonstrators trying to derail a contentious general election scheduled next week in the country swarmed dozens of polling stations Sunday, chaining doors and gates shut and blocking hundreds of thousands of voters from casting advance ballots in the latest blow to the country's increasingly embattled government. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)

BANGKOK - Anti-government demonstrators swarmed dozens of polling stations in Thailand on Sunday to stop advance voting for next week’s general elections, chaining gates shut, threatening voters and preventing hundreds of thousands of people from casting ballots.

A protest faction leader was fatally shot in a confrontation near a voting center that also left 11 people wounded, the city’s emergency services said, and isolated street brawls broke out in several parts of Bangkok.

The chaos underscored the precariousness of Thailand’s fragile democracy and the increasing weakness of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s elected administration. Yingluck had called the Sunday vote in a failed bid to ease months of street protests, but police did not disperse the crowds because of longstanding orders to avert violence, which many fear would give the all-powerful army reason to stage a coup.

“It’s a sad day for democracy when the right to vote … is assaulted by a political movement that claims to be striving for reform and people’s empowerment,” said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Everything that happened today shows they are striving for the opposite.”

Sunai, who was also unable to vote, said that demonstrators forcefully intimidated would be voters and in at least one case attempted to strangle a man. Demonstrators were also targeted - gunmen opened fire on a group attempting to block polling near a temple, killing faction leader Sutin Tharatin while he was giving a speech on the back of a truck.

Although most polling stations in Bangkok and many in the opposition stronghold in the south were forced to close, voting proceeded largely unhindered in the rest of the country.

The commission, which agrees with protesters that the poll should be delayed, is legally mandated to ensure registered voters are able to cast ballots safely. But on Sunday, its members “just sat down and watched this thing collapse around them,” Sunai said.

The commission is supposed to be neutral, but critics have accused its members of taking sides. Its top executive, Somchai Srisutthiyakorn, has posed for at least one smiling photo with demonstrators, and its officials failed to denounce a violent effort by protesters to disrupt candidate registration in December.

On Sunday, the commission issued no public condemnation of attempts to derail voting.

Somchai insisted he had requested security reinforcements for polling stations Thursday, rebutting accusations by Labor Minister Chalerm Yubumrung that he had never asked for help, the Thairath newspaper reported. Chalerm heads a special command center set up to oversee security under a state of emergency decree announced last week.

The protesters, a minority that cannot win power at the polls, are demanding Thailand’s democracy be put on hold. They want Yingluck’s government replaced by a nonelected “people’s council” that would implement anti-corruption reforms before elections. They accuse her of corruption and purport the ruling party has employed its electoral majority to subvert democracy.

Much of their hatred is directed at Yingluck’s family. They say she is a puppet of her billionaire brother Thaksin Shinawatra, an exiled former premier they purport used the family fortune and state funds to influence voters. Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup that provoked a struggle that in broad terms pits Thailand’s rural north against an urban elite backed by royalists and the south.

The protest movement, known as the People’s Democratic Reform Committee, had pledged not to obstruct Sunday’s poll. Protest spokesman Akanat Promphan said that those who had locked the gates of polling stations had “acted on their own,” but he did not criticize them and said the decision to close stations was made by Election Commission officials.

Officials ultimately shut polling stations in 83 of the nation’s 375 constituencies, authorities said.

Suthida Sungkhapunthu, a 28-year-old office worker, said she turned back from one polling station after reading news of the day’s mayhem on her phone.

“I saw this coming, but I’m still quite disappointed,” she said, calling the protesters “undemocratic” as she watched a mob surrounding her polling station a block away. “It’s my constitutional right” to vote, she said.

About 49 million of the nation’s 64 million people are eligible to cast ballots in February, and 2.16 million applied for early voting. But even before Sunday, there had been increasing doubt that the main poll would go ahead next week.

Ruling party officials suggested over the weekend that they were willing to delay next week’s ballot, but only if protests end and the main opposition party abandons its boycott. There has been no sign yet that Yingluck’s rivals would agree to any deal, however.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 01/27/2014

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