t-shirt colors.There are serious institutional failure and democratic
sabotage.
The ongoing demonstrations by the red-shirts expose the un-easy
relationship between democracy on one hand and royalty, business
elite, military and the judiciary on the other hand.
The red-shirts have several grievances but one struck me as genuine:
that there is a conspiracy by the royalists,business elite, military
and the judiciary to defeat democracy.
The military toppled Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup in 2005, the
monarchy endorsed the coup. The Constitutional Court ruled Thaksin
Shinawatra's party parliamentary majority to be a result of electoral
fraud paving the way for Abhisit Vejajiva's premiership without an
election.
These events reek of a well orchestrated scheme and the red-shirts
have a score here.
Though the red-shirts are largelly pro Thaksin,some of them are not
but just fighting for democracy.
Another facet of Thai society that the political power struggles is
class struggles. The red-shirts are mainly drawn from rural poor of
the north and north east of Thailand.
The yellow-shirts, the demonstrators that normally turn up to support
the status quo are the city middle class types.
This does not augur well fof Thai economic and political stability.
Class tensions can easily degenerate into long lasting tensions and
violence.
So far, the demonstrations by the red-shirts are peaceful but there is
little assurance that it will remain so. Last year's April
demonstrations turned ugly leading to two deaths and several injuries.
If the yellow-shirts, the pro Abhisit group, ducide to jump in the
fray, then Thailand will grind to a halt like it did the other time.
The only complain now is traffic.
The red-shirts had issued a deadline for elections date to be
announced today and accordingly threatened unspecified action.
Violence is anyone's guess.
The international community has been particularly quiet as Thailand
goes down. What is the catch?
what will happen to its booming sex tourism? am alot concerned
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