BANGKOK: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s red-shirted supporters said on Wednesday they were ready to defend her government in the streets from royalist-backed protesters seeking to install unelected leaders.

The warning by Thailand’s mostly working poor “red shirts” highlights the risks of a crisis fueled by middle-class anger at the electoral and legislative power of the Shinawatra family, revered as populist heroes in the vote-rich north and northeast.

The turmoil has veered from violent protests in which five people were killed and more than 300 wounded to occupations of government buildings and, in recent days, bewildering statements by Suthep Thaugsuban, a firebrand politician who quit the mainstream opposition to lead the protesters.

He has told police to arrest Yingluck for treason, ordered civil servants to report to him, not the government and called for citizen “peacekeeping forces” to take over from police.

On Wednesday, he mocked Yingluck for her earlier comment that she could not resign because she needed to run the country as caretaker until an election slated for Feb. 2. “If a plane crashed with the whole cabinet in it and they all died, Thailand would still go on,” Suthep said, describing himself as an “ambassador of the people” before a crowd of 2,500, one of the smallest since his campaign started.

He said he had requested a meeting with the police and military chiefs by Thursday evening, during which he would ask them to choose a side in the conflict. Their comments, he said, would help shape his strategy to overthrow Yingluck.

It’s unclear if they will meet. Missed deadlines have become the norm for a publicity-thirsty protest movement that has openly courted anarchy on Bangkok streets in hopes of inducing a military coup or judicial intervention to bring down Yingluck.

Threatened national strikes have not materialized. Police have ignored calls to withdraw. Deadlines for toppling the government have passed with Yingluck shaken but still in power.

Demonstrations expanded on Monday when 160,000 people rallied in Bangkok, causing Yingluck to dissolve parliament and call an election for Feb. 2. That vote may be meaningless if the Democrat Party, which backs the protests, decides to boycott it.

Suthep, a silver-haired former deputy prime minister in Democrat-led government that Yingluck’s ruling party beat by a landslide in 2011, has pressed forward with a plan to install an unelected “people’s council” made up of appointed “good people.”

If that happens, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), as the red shirts are known, would rally to Yingluck’s side, said Jatuporn Promphan, one of its leaders. “It is the UDD’s job to bring together en masse the red shirts and those who love democracy and don’t agree with Suthep’s methods.