Protesters Block Thai Voting Stations Ahead of Elections

Antigovernment demonstrators want the current administration replaced with a nonelected "people's council"

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Antigovernment protesters mobbed Thai polling stations Sunday, threatening would-be voters and preventing hundred of thousands from casting ballots in an effort to derail pre-general-election voting, reports the Associated Press.

The minority antigovernment demonstrators want the current administration replaced with a nonelected “people’s council” in order to fight corruption, which they say has plagued Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government, as well as her brother’s, who was deposed in a 2006 coup.

Yingluck called for a Feb. 2 vote in order to quell unrest in the country that has pitted Bangkok’s middle classes and southern Thais against progovernment supporters from the poorer but populous north.

A confrontation in front of a polling center left 11 people wounded and a protest faction leader shot dead, while brawls broke out in Bangkok.

[AP]