Thai police flee Bangkok airport as protesters attack

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

Thai riot police fled their checkpoint outside Bangkok's besieged international airport today when they were attacked by several hundred armed anti-government protesters.

Some 150 officers stationed half a mile down the expressway leading to Suvarnabhumi airport's terminal piled into their vehicles and left as a convoy of demonstrators drove towards them.

As the police vehicles passed, the protesters hurled firecrackers at them and took swings at their windscreens with iron bars.
...
The Thai prime minister last night sacked the country's police chief, Pacharawat Wongsuwan, after security forces failed to evict the demonstrators. Somchai Wongsawat's decision to remove the police general was another sign of the deepening tensions between the government and the security forces, which have raised fears of another coup.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/thailand-bangkokairport

[Ian David]

1. Are these the same guys that worked for the British security firm on the oil tanker? n/t

[Joanne98]

2. The Shock Doctrine has a whole chapter on the tsunami...

And how the authorties used it to grab the ocean front property from the fishing peoples. This is probably what the protesters are mad about.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Unlikely - PAD is the urban faction, who want to stop one person one vote democracy

because it gives too much power to rural people:

Then along came a communications multimillionaire named Thaksin Shinawatra, who jumped into politics with what he thought was a bullet-proof formula for staying in power. Holding out the lure of instant largesse (buying votes is a Thai tradition, but not on this scale), he built a solid populist base in the neglected Thai northeast and other impoverished agrarian areas. Some call it "rural fascism." This challenged, and to some extent panicked, the urban middle class, which had come to believe it owned the right to democratic political leadership.

Thaksin, at the head of a political movement he cleverly if clumsily named Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais), became prime minister in 2001. Clouds of corruption and the abuse of power hovered around him from the start. Human rights groups documented what appeared to be politically sanctioned killings of thousands of narcotics suspects in northern Thailand and alleged Muslim militants in the Thai south. Nonetheless his rural base held, and he was reelected by a landslide in 2005.
...
Meanwhile the opposition, grouped loosely into the People's Alliance for Democracy and clad in yellow in deference to King Bhumibol Adulyadej and the color of the royal flag, has proved only that it can shut the country down. The king, a power behind the scenes who rarely ever intruded publicly in politics, did step out of character a few years ago to criticize Thaksin for the harm he was doing to the country's reputation. That made him a symbol of democracy to the urban Yellow Shirts. Thaksin's heirs are the Red Shirts.

But many Thais are now wondering with some alarm where the urban elite are taking the country. This week, in the biggest show of numerical power and dedication, the Yellow Shirts were able within a few hours to roll over passive security services to seize Suvarnabhumi, Thailand's showcase new airport and one of the largest and most sophisticated in Asia. Score one. But this happened just as the height of the lucrative Thai winter tourist season was beginning and the country was weathering the global recession relatively well.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/crossette?rel=hpbox

A crowd of thousands surrounded the Thai parliament on 24 November, shutting down a joint session of both chambers. The next day they marched on the offices of the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, to demand his resignation, going not to Government House in central Bangkok - occupied by protesters since August - but to rather less salubrious quarters at an old airport north of the city, from which ministers have been forced to operate.

A welcome demonstration of the popular will, it may be thought. Do not the protesters gather under the banner of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD)? Yet as so often in Thai and south-east Asian politics, all is not what it seems. The PAD actually wants less democracy, or at least less of the one-man-one-vote variety.

Its leaders say that the rural poor who voted for Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in the army-led coup of 2006, and his successors (or proxies), are too ill-educated, their ballots too easily purchased by the highest bidder.

The PAD - ultra-monarchist, hence the profusion of royal yellow in the crowds - prefers a mostly nominated parliament and a polity dominated by the urban business classes and the army. This more authoritarian model, they say, is needed to bring stability and recovery from the excesses of Thaksin, recently sentenced in absentia to two years on corruption charges.

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2008/11/thailand-protests-elites-mass

Critics however have said the group's name appears to be a misnomer as its opposition to the results of three elections show it is neither populist nor does it want representative democracy.

Instead, Sondhi and the PAD advocate the scrapping of the one-man-one-vote system in Thailand and say only 30 per cent of parliament's members should be directly elected by the people.

The remaining 70 per cent should be chosen from various occupations and professions and be appointed, they say.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/09/2008935491945127.html

[grantcart]

5. The rural have no power because they sell their votes to the commercial

interests who want to continue to exploit the rural poor.


The extra constitutional objectives of the PAD are of course bizarre but would actually protect the interests of all Thais, including the rural poor more than this government which goes to the highest bidder and then ravages the country's financial interests.


The PAD is not supported by the Urban Business elite but by the urban middle class, urban bureacracy, the urban working poor. The urban commercial interests built the TRT party and the other parties that regularly sell out to the oligarchy that has monopolized the government.

The PAD is heavily supported by the unions, activists and intellectuals in Thailand.

The central committee of the PAD consists of:

Media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul
Major General Chamlong Srimuang
Activist Phiphob Thongchai
State enterprise labor union leader Somsak Kosaisuuk
University lecturer and social activist Somkiat Pongpaibul.<41>
Besides the five leaders, ten others were part of the PAD management committee: Pitaya Wongkul, Rewadee Prasertcharoensuuk, Rosana Tositrakul, Chaiwat Sindhuwong, Preeda Tiasuwan, Sirichai Maingam, Suwit Watnuu, Kochawan Chaiyabut, Weerapol Sopa, Ouychai Wata.

Other leaders include Khamnoon Sitthisaman and Campaign for Popular Democracy leader Suriyasai Katasila. Several current and former employees of Sondhi played a role, including Panthep Puapongbhant, Samran Rodpetch, Kumnuun Sidhisamann, Sarocha Pornudomsak, Anchalee Paireerak, Yuthayong Limlertwatee, and Torpong Sewatarm.



The current prime minister is a sock puppet for his brother in law who was involved in 1) 'extra judicial murders' 2) widespread vote buying 3) changing the law allowing him to sell Shin Corporation to Singapore interests.

On January 23, 2006, the Shinawatra family sold its remaining 49.6 percent stake in the company to nominees of Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment arm, for US$1.88 billion.

The Shinawatra government faced frequent allegations of corruption, authoritarianism, demagogy, treason, conflicts of interest, acting non-diplomatically, tax evasion, the use of legal loopholes and hostility towards a free press.<10> Thaksin was accused of lèse-majesté, selling domestic assets to international investors and religious desecration.<11><12>

Independent bodies, including Amnesty International, who also expressed concern at Thaksin's human rights record. Human Rights Watch described Thaksin as "a human rights abuser of the worst kind", alleging that he participated in media suppression and presided over a violent campaign against drugs. After the coup, the military investigated the campaign but found that Thaksin had not been directly involved with any of these killings. The series of protests in 2005 and 2006 led by Sondhi Limthongkul and his People's Alliance for Democracy led to a decline in his popularity among Bangkok residents. He was also subject to several purported assassination attempts during that period.<13><14>

Chamlong SriMuang, the leader of the PAD, is an ascetic who lives in a home with no walls, served as Governor of Bangkok and has no commercial interests;

Major General Chamlong Srimuang (Thai: จำลอง ศรีเมือง, Traditional Chinese: 盧金河 Simplified Chinese: 卢金河, Lu Jinhe, born 5 July 1935) is a controversial Thai activist and former politician. A former military officer, he was a leader of the "Young Turks" military clique, founded and led the Phalang Dharma party, served for six years as governor of Bangkok, led the anti-military uprising of May 1992, and is a leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy, a group dedicated to the overthrow of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and later of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. Chamlong supported the military junta that overthrew Thaksin in a coup. A devout Buddhist and supporter of the controversial Santi Asoke sect, he is celibate, a vegetarian, and claims to have no worldly possessions. He is married to Sirilak Srimuang.

You can learn more about Chamlong's long struggle for political justice here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamlong_Srimuang

[jberryhill]

8. Bhumibol doesn't seem competent - at least from appearances

...and I understand his son isn't as well liked.

How do you see this thing working out?

[grantcart]

9. If the King doesn't intervene then it can only be solved by violent intervention

by the police or by the resignation of the government.


It is hard to understand why the King has not intervened by this point because in all past confrontations he would make a symbolic gesture that would lead to a peaceful resolution.


Discussions about the Royal Family are very complicated because it is not a unified institution but has many of the same conflicts that the Army, the Police and Business interests have.


Thailand has always been an oligarchy with power passing between the same groups flowing back and forth. If one party was out of government this time then they could expect to be let back in the next time.


Taksin upset that equation by taking all the power himself. Chamlong upsets it too by mobilizing the urban masses who want to move away from the oligarchy and have 'western' style democracy.


The son is not well liked, especially in Bangkok where his personal life is well known.


When I was in Thailand I had friends that were part of the Royal Family and the King purposely reduced the power of the King as an effort to get the political parties to take more power (appointing the Finance minister without Royal guidance for example). It was understood that he did not want his son to inherit a position that was so deeply involved in the country.

He is in a difficult position because both groups support the King, the rural poor and the PAD. The PAD support however is strategic and not because they are inherently royalists. They support the King because of his moral leadership not because he is King. If his son was King I doubt that the PAD would be so supportive although the rural poor would continue to support whoever is King.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Blast hits Thai government house

An explosion has injured at least 11 people inside the opposition-occupied government house in the Thai capital Bangkok.

The blast came as the authorities were trying to end a blockade of Bangkok's two main airports by protesters who are demanding the prime minister's sacking.

A grenade was reportedly thrown at the protesters at government house.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7756766.stm

[AsahinaKimi]

6. This gives new meaning to the term

PAD THAI. (that's a dish on the menu)
but seriously...
When was the last time Protesters chased off the police? Had that been here? omg..
its too much to think about.

[bemildred]

7. Now this is how you bring down a government. nt