From wheredaily.com
What would Che do?
It looks like something right out of 1960s America – only with color, one color that is. Red.
Bangkok is awash in red shirts, red banners, red flags, even red plastic clapping hands and no one is really sure why, except the ones dowsed in color. If this is a revolution, even the police don’t care.
The “Red Shirt” revolution is giving peace-loving Thais another flower to wear. So far, the throngs of demonstrating revolutionaries have succeeded in taking over key streets in the city and turning traffic into more than the morass it usually is. But it has not done much else.
At issue is a call for a changing of the guard – with the old guard. The former prime minister wants his job back and is waging a well-funded grassroots movement to make it happen. The current regime under Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva came to power in quiet coup in 2006 as then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire former telecoms tycoon and former police colonel, was under scrutiny for corruption charges. But Thaksin was not your run-of-the-mill dirty politician. He was a run-of-the-mill dirty politician with a heart. He came to power in 2001 in a landslide victory powered by Thailand’s disenfranchised and marginalized masses and was ejected from power in the country’s 18th coup in some 70 years.
He brought with him reforms that raised living standards in the country and generally elevated Thailand’s position as a world player in politics and economics. And his people want him back. Or at least that is what it seems.
Blocks of encampments line the dusty streets of Bangkok, mostly populated with protesters from Chiang Mai and points north in Bangkok from where Thaksin hails. They are well fed by organized kitchen tents, and manage sanitation through an army of well-placed bathroom trucks. They have their own policing units and traffic managers, sound stages and broadcasting facilities. No one knows quite where all the money for this comes from but easy speculations are made.
Bangkok’s police forces run a light guard around the protest site perimeters, occasionally lining up in a token show of force before retreating for relaxing chats and cigarette breaks.
Meanwhile, the “Yellow Shirts” are nowhere to be seen. Those are the supporters of the current regime who boldly took over Bangkok’s airports for a week in 2008 in a show of unity for the current prime minister. Throughout the politicking, Abhisit is nowhere to be seen. He rarely shows at public or ceremonial events as scheduled and maintains a stance of quiet disinterest, assuming the movement will wear down in time and everyone will go home.
So far, all remains peaceful in Bangkok despite weekend marches through financial districts, mall closures, heated rallies, strange symbolic charades and warring headlines between the two leaders. Tourism continues and visitors remain safe and comfortable far from any inconvenience outside certain traffic snarls and random mall closures, although the government mentions losses of at least 10 percent of the destination’s usual tourism numbers so far.
Peace sign, Thai style
Violence is not expected, but patience is not projected. As for a divided population? Yawn. Somehow, those Che Guevara T-shirts and scary red bandanas for sale along the red shirt side walks like so many hot dogs in Central Park are not drumming up the fervor when it comes to reinstating one of the richest men in Asia.
For everyone but banner waving protesters and the skittish prime minister, all is peaceful and copasetic in the Thai capital. Shoppers may have to switch malls but Thailand is very much open for business.
