Apparently Your Demonstrations Don't Matter Much in Thailand (and to the World) if You're Part of the Poor Majority (Updated with Link for History)

The Future

Thailand's leaders should be careful.

Young ones can grow up fast, and angry.

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During the demonstrations that helped grease the wheels of the coup which ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra the mainstream press tended to praise the resolve of the demonstrators and repeat allegations that the then leader was corrupt.  

After the coup a new popular vote was held that elected an ally of Mr. Shinawatra, against whom demonstrations last year severely hurt the tourism business, and even took control of the main airport, yet no one called the troops out and no one in mainstream news considered that the Asian nation should call the troops out to uproot the demonstrators who.

This year, a new leader has been installed by the Parliament instead of by popular vote of the people who is a member of the yellow shirt party which is backed by more wealthy and business friendly elements in the nation.  The followers of Shinawatra, the Red Shirts, took to the streets calling for a new election so a leader could be chosen by the people, not the more elitist legislature. 

When troops were called out last week, most of the mainstream news media I've heard and read calmly reported how the deployment was necessary to maintain order and to prevent harm to the nation's tourist industry, and most did not remind people that demonstrations against the former leaders by the elitist yellow shirts who support the current prime minister never saw troops deployed against them despite taking and holding the main airport for a period last year.  If that didn't hurt the Thai tourist industry, I don't know what would.

Today a BBC report I heard via podcast ended the story saying that when the demonstrations were put down the people went back to celebrating a holiday in the normal way, by playing with squirt guns.

Nothing to see here folks, just the elite taking back their nation.

I searched for news reports on the demonstrations and did find a BBC report that does note the sad fact that the Thai army seems to be acting in a partisan manner by interrupting the actions of the red shirts when they stood by during the actions of the yellow topped party earlier.

See BBC: "No winners in Thailand's crisis"

There is a pretty good (though biased) rundown of Thailand's recent history at Reuter's business connection's Alert Net "ANALYSIS-Thai red shirt rampage: Thaksin's last hurrah?".  Interesting and informative but proving that working closely with business will do more to slant your coverage than being targeted by the US military.

tags: thailand  protests  red shirts  thaksin shinawatra  abhisit vejjajiva  

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