Friday March 24, 4:41 PM
Thai king meets advisers on appeals for new PM
Thailand's king has met his top advisers to discuss the growing calls to appoint a new prime minister and end the country's political stand-off, sources close to the meeting have said.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej held a rare meeting late Thursday with the Privy Council, which presented him with appeals to replace embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, they said.
"The king was briefed on the current political crisis and presented with royal appeals to appoint a neutral person as the new prime minister," one source close to the council said.
The royal palace keeps a tight lid on most information about the king's activities, and people involved in the talks were not allowed to speak on the record as a matter of protocol.
Opposition leaders, academics, doctors, lawyers and others have urged the king to invoke a never-used article of the Thai constitution that allows him to name an interim prime minister in times of crisis.
Thaksin has been battling weeks of demonstrations calling for him to resign since his family pocketed almost two billion dollars in a tax-free stock sale.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in near daily protests with another mass demonstration planned for the weekend.
If the king was to appoint a prime minister, that person would act as a caretaker until new elections can be held.
Thaksin called elections for April 2, three years early, in hopes of breaking the deadlock but the opposition has boycotted the polls, casting doubt on whether the vote will produce a new parliament.
On Friday, Thaksin declined to comment on the royal meeting but insisted that elections were the best way to solve the political crisis.
"People should go out to vote -- people who don't agree with government as well as those who support the government," he told reporters before leaving Bangkok to campaign in northeastern Thailand.
"The government will listen to the people," he said.
Thaksin has spent most of the last two weeks campaigning in rural Thailand, where 60 percent of the nation's 63 million people live. He regularly draws tens of thousands of people to his rallies in the countryside, where his policies have boosted incomes and standards of living.
Amid worries that next week's election results could deepen the crisis, Thaksin has tried to salvage the polls by turning them into a referendum on his government, saying he would refuse to take office if he wins less than half the vote.
But activists in Bangkok have stepped up their campaign. Thousands of protesters have marched through the capital all week, while others have blockaded Thaksin's office.
The opposition Democrats plan a rally later Friday, while a coalition of anti-Thaksin groups known as the People's Alliance for Democracy hopes to bring out tens of thousands of people on Saturday.