Hundreds of thousands of Thais were blocked from voting on Sunday as antigovernment demonstrators obstructed polling places in Bangkok and southern Thailand in a campaign to suspend democracy and replace Parliament with an unelected “people’s council.”
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Critics of the protest movement, which is battling to purge the country of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her influential family, called Sunday’s shutdown of polling places a major blow to democracy in Thailand and a possible portent of further moves to seize power from the government.
More than two million people out of a total electorate of about 48 million were registered for Sunday’s advance voting, which was held for those unable to vote in the Feb. 2 general election.