Author: Chris Baker, Kyoto University

Last year, fire; this year, water.

The largest demonstrations in Thailand’s political history ended with over 90 deaths in April–May 2010, but 18 months later, with the country’s biggest floods in half a century, some believed that togetherness in suffering would revive a mythical ‘national unity’. Read more…

Author: Nicholas Farrelly, ANU

Thailand goes to the polls today for only the second time since the military coup of September 2006.

That coup was designed to obliterate the election-winning juggernaut commanded by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Read more…

Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun, ISEAS

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has given his word: the nation, submerged in growing political uncertainty, will go to the polls in the first half of this year.

The election is likely to be held in June. Read more…

Author: Jim Taylor, University of Adelaide

Red Shirts around Thailand are saying they won’t be duped any longer by the Democrat Party and its alliance, as they were at the previous two elections.

Even with General Prem Tinsulanonda’s political machinations and his overt support for the Democrat Party, people may rise up across the country, if the right conditions are in place and meaningful reform is not carried out. Read more…

Author: Chalongphob Sussangkarn, TDRI, Bangkok

The Red Shirts’ protracted occupation of a central Bangkok area and the eventual violent and deadly end in May 2010 reiterated the highly divisive situation in Thai politics.

This protest, like the Yellow Shirts’ closure of the Bangkok airport toward the end of 2008, had the potential to have extended negative impacts on the broader economy, particularly on foreigners’ confidence. Read more…

Author: Nicholas Farrelly, ANU

In Thailand’s traditional style of kick-boxing, the bout begins with ornate and time-consuming preambles. Offerings are made. Respect is shown. Brutal bursts of punches, high kicks, knees and elbows follow. It is fast and furious combat that rewards total commitment once the fight begins.

As a public spectacle of martial prowess, Thai kick-boxing offers some insight into the formidable capacity for violence which can lurk in the corner of the easy-going Thai smile. Read more…

Authors: Andrew Walker and Nicholas Farrelly, ANU

Thai politics has been out of the news since May 2010’s bloody crackdown on red-shirt protesters in central Bangkok. But any superficial tranquility hides the ongoing campaign by the government to neutralise their opponents and maximise the vote for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrat Party at the election due next year.

The state of emergency declared in May has been wound back, but is still in force in Bangkok and in three strategic provinces outside the capital. Read more…

Author: Peter Warr, ANU

On the afternoon of May 19, following weeks of protests and mayhem, most of the core Red Shirt leaders barricaded in the centre of Bangkok surrendered meekly to the Thai government forces. One leader who evaded capture was the volatile Arisman Pongruangrong. Just before vanishing later that afternoon, Arisman was wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of Mahatma Gandhi. The symbolism was deeply ironic.

Almost a century before, Gandhi had expounded a political principle that the Red Shirt leadership, including Arisman, had still not absorbed. To dislodge an entrenched government like Thailand’s, a popular uprising had to do two things: attract public support in very large numbers and be non-violent. The Red Shirts failed on both counts. Read more…

Author: Jonathan Fox

July 7 marked 90 days since Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Thailand. Even though Thai security forces quelled the Red Shirt protests in late May, the Abhisit administration recently extended the emergency decree over nearly a third of the kingdom for an additional three months. While much has been said about the political, economic and social impacts of the kingdom’s recent unrest, little attention has been given to the dangerous erosion of freedom of expression in Thailand.

The recent cycle of deadly violence began on March 12, when tens of thousands of Red Shirt protesters rallied against the Abhisit government. Read more…

Author: Nick Nostitz

In 25 October 2009 I went to northeast Thailand, this time to the village of Nong Wua So, about 40 kilometres outside the city of Udon Thani, to observe a red shirt rally: village-style. When I arrived in the early afternoon the action had not yet begun. Soon after, many people began arriving from surrounding villages. Around the rim of the rally area were food stalls, and several large trampolines where children jumped around for a few baht each. Kwanchai Paipanna, the charismatic leader of the Udon Lovers, a local red shirt group, and organiser of the rally, was already there, sitting in a tent close to the stage. He talked with red shirts and police officers.

A high-ranking officer asked Kwanchai to accompany him to visit the abbot at a famous local temple. Read more…

Author: Nicholas Farrelly, ANU

Over the past week Thailand’s Red Shirt protest movement has, once again, largely faded from international media coverage. Its key leaders have been arrested or are in hiding, and many others associated with Red Shirt politics in Thailand are now subjected to witch-hunts and official ridicule. Dozens have been killed, iconic buildings burned, and thousands have been left injured or traumatised.

Thailand’s reputed national ethos of compromise and conciliation has been pulverised beyond recognition. Insofar as the Thai government can claim a momentary victory over its foes it is forced to rely on the most draconian provisions of its security infrastructure.

Read more…

Author: Kevin Hewison, UNC

Anyone with even a passing interest in Thailand knows that there was a military coup in September 2006. The coup was meant to end the political domination of telecommunications tycoon and former Prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra who had won the two largest electoral victories in Thai history. The coup punctuated a period of political turmoil that began in 2005 and continues to this day.

Some commentators agree that this period of turmoil marks a political or cultural turning point. Read more…

Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University

The red shirt uprising in Bangkok has brought Thailand’s topsy-turvy politics to a critical juncture as brinksmanship and confrontation intensify. Since early 2009, many tens of thousands of red shirts, nominally under the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and supportive of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have agitated and mobilised against the coalition government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. After rioting in the streets and retreating in disgrace in April 2009, they regrouped and reclaimed their agenda with street protests in Bangkok in March and April 2010, calling for a dissolution of the lower house and new polls to reboot Thailand’s democratic game.

As the reds ramped up their rhetoric and street demonstrations, their demands for a dissolution of the lower house were set against the defiance and resolve of Prime Minister Abhisit and his patrons and allies. Read more…

Author: John J Brandon, The Asia Foundation

Over the past four decades, during times of political turbulence in Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has served as the nation’s unifying force.

In October 1973, King Bhumibol supported student demonstrators against violent military action. Subsequently, Thailand’s three top military leaders were forced to seek asylum in other nations. The tempestuous politics that followed – weak, unstable coalition governments, a troubled economy, and an internal communist insurgency; coupled with communist victories in Indochina – alarmed the King who then lent his weight to the return of military rule in October 1976. Read more…

Author: John J Brandon, The Asia Foundation

As Thais begin to celebrate Buddhist New Year (known as ‘songkran’) next week, they will be doing so under the specter that forces inside the country will not have reached an acceptable agreement in resolving the nation’s four-year political impasse.

Since mid-March, thousands of anti-government demonstrators, known as ‘red shirts,’ from the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) have tied-up traffic in major intersections of Bangkok, including the city’s commercial center where shopping malls and banks were closed for three days earlier this week. On April 7, after protesters pushed through the main gate of the parliament compound, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok to help restore order, the red shirts are demanding that Mr. Abhisit dissolve Parliament and call for new elections. Read more…