Protesters keep pressuring on businesses linked with Shinawatra family

BANGKOK, February 24 (TNA) - Anti-government protesters have continued pressuring on businesses linked with the Shinawatra family. Phra Buddha Issara, a leader of the anti-government People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) on Chaeng Watthana Road in Bangkok, led followers to the Voice TV station of Panthongtae Shinawatra, son of exiled ex-Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, announcing that rice growers would also join the rally there. The abbot alleged that news reports of the station were biased and groundless, vowing that he would stay at the Voice TV station until he was invited to be in a program. However, anti-government protesters did not enter the station, which was locked and guarded by police. Former Democrat MP Witthaya Kaewparadai, in the meantime, led PDRC demonstrators from Silom Road to M Link Asia Corporation Public Company Limited on Sukhumvit 62 Road in the capital, claiming that the company is a business of the Shinawatra family and his group demanded it stop business operations, but the management of the company insisted, after meeting protest leaders, that the company is a public listed company and could not prohibit any particular person from holding its shares, and that the company would continue to operate. PDRC spokesman Akanat Promphan told reporters that six groups of anti-government protesters planned to visit 19 locations of government offices and businesses allegedly funding the Thaksin regime. In another development, protesting farmers rallying at the Ministry of Commerce on the outskirts of Bangkok allowed the ministry's officials to work but still blocked private vehicles from entering it though their number declined because some farmers have joined the PDRC's protest. Meanwhile, the pro-government, red-shirt United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) staged its rally at the central stadium of Nakhon Ratchasima Province in the Thai Northeast on Sunday, when a core leader, Nattawut Saikuar, who is also Caretaker Deputy Commerce Minister, called for the caretaker government to continue staying in office, urgently solve rice price problems, ignore corruption charges from the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) relating to the government's rice-pledging scheme as the anti-graft commission's actions are considered double standard, arm police to cope with armed opponents and set up a government in exile if the domestic political situation got out of hand. (TNA)