The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) is demanding that the government investigate the escape of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and severely punish any state officials who helped her flee the country.
"Unless the government and the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) can find and punish the wrongdoers, the deputy prime minister must resign," Parnthep Pourpongpan, former spokesman of the defunct group, said yesterday, referring to Gen Prawit Wongsuwon, who is in charge of national security.
Ms Yingluck is reported to be in Dubai where her exiled brother Thaksin lives, having fled the country before she was due to appear at the Supreme Court in Bangkok on Friday for the ruling in her negligence case. She is believed to have travelled overland to Cambodia and then flown to the United Arab Emirates via Singapore.
High-level sources told the Bangkok Post on Friday that senior officials were complicit in the escape. They feared that a guilty ruling and jail term would lead to unrest among Ms Yingluck's many supporters, 3,000 of whom waited in vain to see her at the Supreme Court.
Gen Prawit conceded on Friday that it was likely Ms Yingluck had fled the country.
Meanwhile, Mr Parnthep noted that Gen Prawit on Feb 29 last year had said soldiers were needed to provide protection for Ms Yingluck and to help maintain peace and order in a politically tense time.
"This is a very high-profile case that people all around the world are watching. If she could escape, that was either a conspiracy or an unforgivable failure," said the former spokesman of the PAD, the yellow-shirt movement that began life in 2005 to protest against the government of Thaksin Shinawatra and its later incarnations until 2013.
On the question of whether Ms Yingluck's escape was possibly a compromise to avoid political unrest as a result of the court's ruling, Mr Parnthep said such a situation reflected unfairness that some people had the privilege not to face the justice system while other political players including PAD leaders and red-shirt leaders had been jailed for their political actions.
NCPO spokesman Winthai Suvari yesterday insisted Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, also NCPO chief, had not made any special order regarding security policy after Ms Yingluck failed to show up at the Supreme Court, which led to an arrest warrant being issued for her.
Normal security mechanisms are now being implemented in an attempt to locate Ms Yingluck, said Col Winthai.
National Legislative Assembly second vice-president Peerasak Porchit, meanwhile, said it would still be normal if any groups made a move after Ms Yingluck disappeared because she is a former prime minister who still holds support from a huge number of people, but the move would be unlikely to lead to a new round of violence.
The house of Ms Yingluck on Soi Yothin Phatthana 3 in Bangkok is now under the Lat Phrao police station's surveillance around the clock, said Pol Maj Gen Nanthachat Suphamongkon, chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau's Division 4.
Police officers on duty at the house are required to update the situation every two hours and a crowd control force is on standby and ready to be deployed to the house in 10 minutes if necessary, he said.
Authorities at this point are not permitted to search the house without a search warrant from the court, he said, adding that police were told by a maid at the house who answered their phone call that she didn't know where Ms Yingluck was.
