Thailand's Caretaker PM: Children are national hope and future

BANGKOK, January 11 (TNA) - Thailand's Caretaker Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra says children are national hope and future, like small lights that all adults have a common responsibility to keep them illuminating. Yingluck posted a message on her Facebook account, marking the National Children's Day on Saturday, making her apology to children for being unable to visit the Government House, have an opportunity of a life time to sit on the prime minister chair and to attend shows sponsored by the government this year. Several children in the past years usually visited the Government House on the National Children’s Day, which falls on every first Saturday of a new year. But Thai children opted to celebrate the National Children's Day this year elsewhere because entrances of the Government House have been blocked by anti-government protesters for weeks. The protesters plan to “shutdown” Bangkok from January 13 onwards, aimed at ousting the caretaker government and holding a national reform. Prompong Nopparit, spokesman of Pheu Thai Party, meanwhile, attacked the anti-government protesters loyal to the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), led by its secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban, that activities organised by the group for children, especially allowing the youths to sit on Suthep’s chair at its rally site at the Democracy Monument in the capital, were “inappropriate”, charging that Suthep has faced several lawsuits, including corruption, while he was in power. Suthep is a former deputy prime minister in the previous government led by the Democrat Party.(TNA)