Thai anti-gov't protesters rally opposing foreign loans' borrowing

BANGKOK, April 2 -- The Thai anti-government protesters on Thursday afternoon staged a rally at the Finance Ministry expressing their disagreement with the government's plan to borrow huge foreign loans to boost the domestic economy.

The protesters, who are led by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), have said that they do not believe the government will be capable of serving the foreign debts.

Moreover, the huge borrowing is to increase the financial burden among the Thai people, they said.

The Democrat-led coalition government has planned to borrow the foreign loans from many foreign financial institutions as the huge loans are to be used to finance several projects over the next few years to boost the domestic sluggish economy.

For this year, the government will borrow some 2 billion U.S. dollars to finance investments in mega projects from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

After having attacked the government for around one hour at the Finance Ministry, several hundreds of the anti-government protesters returned to the Government House, which is their main protesting venue.

The UDD-led protesters are on the eighth day of their anti-government rally in front of the Government House, aiming to overthrow the coalition government.

Starting from Friday, all of the entrances of the Government House have been blocked by the anti-government protesters, preventing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, his cabinet ministers and civil servants from entering to work.

Also, around mid-next week the UDD group will organize another mass rally as UDD core leader Jatuporn Promphan has estimated that 300,000 of the red-shirted people will participate in it.

If the army uses forces to control the anti-government rally ahead of the next week's planned mass protest, it will mean the ending of this coalition government, Jatupron said.

In a related development, Thailand's association of heads of villages and sub-districts issued a statement in Bangkok calling on the red-shirted protesters to end the anti-government protest quickly, the website by Thai-language newspaper Matichon reported.

If the ongoing rally continues, it will increasingly damage the country, the statement said.

Meanwhile, after the government canceled the weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday, it has remained uncertain where the cabinet meeting will be held for next week.