Protest leaders check site of planned rally at the Victory Monument

Leaders of the “Ruam Palang Paendin” group checked the Victory Monument area today, the site of their mass protest, planned for June 28, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the withdrawal of all coalition parties from the government.

One of the leaders, Jatuporn Promphan, said that he expects more than 150,000 people to take part in the protest, to match the 150,000 Cambodians who showed up in Phnom Penh on Wednesday to support their government in the border dispute with Thailand.

He insists that the protest on Saturday is not intended to provoke the military to stage a coup, but to protect the motherland from potential loss of territory to Cambodia, due to the prime minister’s incompetence in the handling of the border dispute.

The protest is expected to last from 4pm until 9pm, said Jatuporn, adding that he hopes that neither the government nor the police will not try to prevent it.

Another protest leader, Panthep Puapongpan, said that they chose the Victory Monument as the venue because it was built after Thailand, then called Siam, had wrestled lost territories back from French colonialists.

He said that the protest will try to cause as little nuisance as possible to patients in hospitals near the monument, by directing the loudspeakers away from them.

Panthep urged the public not to be distracted by a claim, by supporters of Paetongtarn, that she did not leak the recorded phone conversation between her and Hun Sen. Rather, it is the content of that conversation that is at issue.