(VOVworld)- Thailand's constitutional court has deferred a ruling on whether a general election scheduled for 2 February can be postponed, as protesters keep up pressure on the government to step down.

Protestors in Bangkok

The Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, declared a 60-day state of emergency in Bangkok and surrounding areas from Wednesday, hoping to prevent an escalation in the protests now in their third month.

The election commission says the country is too volatile to hold a general election now. The government says the decree to hold the election on that date has been signed by the king and cannot be changed.

The protests are the latest eruption in a political conflict that has gripped the country for eight years. The emergency decree failed to clear the demonstrators, though the capital has been relatively calm this week. Broadly, the conflict pits the Bangkok middle class and royalist establishment against the mainly poorer supporters of Yingluck and her brother, the former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled by the military in 2006.