Thai anti-govt march a prelude to Jan 13 'shutdown'

Election "The Best Medicine"

Yingluck has steadfastly refused to bow to the protesters' demands and is determined that the election, which her Puea Thai Party is almost certain to win, will go ahead.

"I admit that the election may not be a panacea to solve the problems immediately," Yingluck said in a post on her Facebook page on Sunday. "But the election is the best medicine to help solve conflict under the democratic system.

"I don't want to see violence as it happened in 2010, or an economic crisis. We should not leave our children to inherit this conflict," she said.

The government has vowed to roll out 20,000 police and 20 companies of troops to maintain order during the protests. Concurrently, the "red shirts" have also promised to hold rallies outside Bangkok to counter the anti-government group.

Thousands of Puea Thai supporters gathered in a Bangkok suburb on Saturday for the party's official campaign launch.

Pro-Thaksin parties have won every election since 2001, based on their support among the rural poor who have benefited from Thaksin's populist policies such as cheap healthcare, easy credit and subsidies for rice farmers.

The anti-government protesters accuse Thaksin of effectively buying their support and manipulating Thailand's democracy, while also enriching his family and business associates.

The first two years of Yingluck's government had been relatively smooth until a blunder by her party in November, when it tried to push through an unpopular amnesty bill that would have exonerated Thaksin from a 2008 graft conviction he says was politically motivated.

Thaksin fled into exile shortly before he was sentenced to a two-year jail term.

Despite her determination to press ahead, Yingluck is looking more isolated the longer the protests drag on, with intervention by the judiciary or a coup-prone military always a possibility. Thaksin was ousted in a military coup in 2006.