BANGKOK: Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Tuesday she would not resign ahead of national elections set for Feb. 2, her voice filling with emotion as she discussed her family’s role in Thai politics.
Yingluck spoke one day after she announced elections — and one day after the main leader of a protest group seeking her ouster told his followers to stay in the streets even as he insisted his movement had now assumed broad political power.
The brazen claim — unbacked by law or control of any state institutions — has nonetheless been taken seriously by protesters and some Thai media. The Nation newspaper blazed the headline “People’s revolution declared” across its front page.
On Monday, the movement, whose goals and methods one critic described as “fascist,” issued what it titled an “order” calling for Yingluck and her Cabinet to step down from their caretaker posts by late Tuesday night.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban said Tuesday evening that his “People’s Democratic Reform Committee” considered the government already null and void, and said that with the claimed political “vacuum,” there would be an appointment of a prime minister who is “acceptable to the people.” The streets of Bangkok were quiet Tuesday, a national holiday, after weeks of sometimes violent political turmoil.
The protesters accuse Yingluck of serving as a proxy for her billionaire brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in self-imposed exile to avoid jail time for a corruption conviction but still wields immense influence in the country.
Yingluck insisted Tuesday that she would remain the interim head of government until the Feb. 2 elections. “I must do my duty as caretaker prime minister according to the constitution,” she said.
“I have retreated as far as I can. So I ask to be treated fairly,” she said to reporters.
Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire, was toppled by a 2006 military coup that laid bare a deeper conflict between Thailand’s elite and largely urban middle class on one side, and Thaksin’s power base in the countryside on the other. That base benefited from his populist policies designed to win over the rural poor.
Ever since, the two sides have been dueling for power, sometimes violently. Since the latest unrest began last month, at least five people have been killed and at least 289 injured.
The protesters were not quieted by Monday’s announcement of new elections, saying they cannot win the polls because of corruption. The opposition Democrat Party, allied with the protest movement, has been defeated by Thaksin-allied parties in every election since 2001.
A decree from King Bhumibol Adulyadej named Yingluck as caretaker prime minister until the elections.
A newly formed group of more than 150 academics and intellectuals calling themselves the Assembly for the Defense of Democracy criticized the anti-government protesters’ claims of having a legal basis for taking over government, describing them Tuesday as “neither constitutional nor democratic.” “They destroy the process of building political will through peaceful means in a democracy and they will lead the country to violent crisis,” the group’s founding statement said.
Thai premier Yingluck rejects resignation call
Thai premier Yingluck rejects resignation call
Dignified transfer for Kentucky soldier who was the 7th US service member to die in Iran war
- Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky died Sunday
ELIZABETHTOWN, USA: Vice President JD Vance joined the grieving family of a Kentucky man who was the seventh US service member to die in combat during the Iran war as his remains were brought back to the US Monday evening.
The dignified transfer, a solemn event that honors US service members killed in action, took place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky. He died Sunday after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon statement said.
Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saluted alongside high ranking military officials as the transfer case draped with the American flag was carried from the military aircraft and into an awaiting vehicle.
Mike Bell, retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church, said he’d known Pennington since he was a toddler and got a call from Pennington’s father when the soldier was hurt.
“I talked to Tim Saturday morning, and he was doing a little better, and they were talking about maybe moving him to Germany,” Bell said. Tim Pennington called again that evening, Bell said, to ask for prayers as his son’s condition was worsening, and then later told him the soldier had succumbed to his injuries.
“He was just a quiet person,” said Bell, noting that Pennington attended the church’s after-school program. “I mean, he never attracted attention because he was just steady doing what he needed to do to do it.”
State and local officials grieve
Pennington was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade of the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Fort Carson, Colorado.
The unit’s mission focused on “missile warning, GPS, and long-haul satellite communications,” according to their website.
“This just breaks my heart,” Keith Taul, judge-executive of Hardin County, where Pennington was from, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “I have known the family for at least 30 years. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they are experiencing.”
Glendale is an unincorporated town of about 300 residents south of the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown.
In a statement posted on social media, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called Pennington “a hero who sacrificed everything serving our country.”
Six other soldiers killed
The other six service members killed since the conflict began on Feb. 28 were Army reservists killed in Kuwait when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port.
President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for those six US soldiers.
The dignified transfer is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
‘An American hero’
Pennington graduated in 2017 from Central Hardin High School, where he was enrolled in the automotive technology pathway, district spokesman John Wright told the AP. Former automotive tech instructor Tom Pitt, who taught Pennington in 2017 at Hardin County Early College and Career Center, called him “an American hero.”
“A lot of times as a teacher, you have students who are smart, you have students who are charismatic, who are likable, dare I say, enchanting,” said Pitt, who called Pennington Nate. “Rarely do you have students who are all of those. And Ben Pennington was all of those. He was basically the quintessential all-American.”
Photos on his and family members’ Facebook pages show that Pennington achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in August 2017. His Eagle project was the demolition of some old baseball dugouts in Glendale, said Darin Life, former committee chairman for Troop 221.
“If you look up Eagle Scout, his picture’s probably there,” said Life, who knew Pennington throughout his scouting career. “He loved his country. I would have expected nothing less of him than to lose his life protecting his country.”
Awards and decorations
A month after his Eagle ceremony, Pennington posted a photo of himself taking the oath of enlistment. He entered the service as a unit supply specialist and was assigned to the Space and Missile Command on June 10, 2025, the Army said in a release.
Among his awards and decorations were the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.
“The US Army Space and Missile Defense Command is deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Pennington,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved.”
Col. Michael F. Dyer, 1st Space Brigade commander, described Pennington as “a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”
Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Pentagon said.
