Reuters, Bangkok :Anti-government protesters in Thailand’s capital collected money for farmers on Friday, seeking to capitalize on discontent in rural areas at the state’s failure to pay for rice bought under a controversial subsidy scheme.Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was helped to power by a promise to buy rice from millions of farmers at a price that was way above the market. The government has been unable to sell the rice to fund the scheme and some farmers have been waiting for months to get paid.The protest movement in Bangkok trying to oust Yingluck has found much of its support from middle-class, urban taxpayers appalled at what they see as corruption and waste in the rice scheme, but it is now trying to make common cause with the farmers.”This is the way to get money from the rich to help the poor,” said Akanat Promphan, the protesters’ spokesman.Rice farmers have until now been natural supporters of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who raised living standards in the countryside with populist policies such as cheap healthcare when he was prime minister from 2001.But the former telecoms tycoon ran up against opposition from the royalist establishment and the army, which toppled him in 2006, setting off eight years of political turmoil broadly pitting Thaksin’s rural supporters in the north and northeast against the Bangkok-based establishment and middle class.Hundreds of farmers rallied at the Commerce Ministry but Prasit Boonchoey, head of the Thai Rice Farmers Association, denied they were backing anti-government protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban.”This is a farmers’ problem and we won’t be joining Suthep’s protest. We are just calling for what is ours, which is the money the government should pay us,” he told Reuters.
