Songkran and Time for Another Coup

It's Songkran here now, Thai New Year, when people throw water and smear powder on your cheeks for good luck. However, many people have gone back to their villages to be with their families, so the streets are empty and there are no traffic jams.

There are now 3 mobs of people protesting. The red shirts, supporters of Thaksin, are protesting the current government and succeeded in embarrassing Thailand and closing the ASEAN Summit. The government has declared a State of Emergency, and I got a notice from the Canadian Department of External Affairs (I registered with them) warning me to be cautious and to notify any other Canadians. The blue shirts are a new unknown group who attacked the red shirts with sticks and beat them. The yellow shirts support Sondhi who wants to change the parliamentary system to have half the seats appointed by government. They call themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy, but what they want is to kill democracy.

The red shirts are supporters of Thaksin's party, which handed out money to the poor provinces for infrastructure; Isaan and the NW (Chiang Mai - Chiang Rai) got a lot of money, which was far in excess of anything the government had done previously. Thaksin is from Chiang Mai. The poor provinces total 30 million people and make up almost half the Thai population, but the government would prefer they go away. Thaksin helped them, they voted his party into power, which upset the ruling class ... the royalty and the business people. This is why Sondhi, who is a rich business man, wants to kill half of parliament, to make sure it doesn't happen again.

But Thaksin did some stupid things, including setting up a dummy company in the Caribbean to avoid paying Thai taxes, and selling Shinawatra Corp, which he owned personally, to the Singapore government. Shinawatra owns Thailand's only satellite, and all Thai government communications, and military communications, as well as many private (business and personal) are funnelled trough that satellite. This upset the military, who did not want Singapore to be able to access their secret messages. All communications are encoded, of course, but with enough horsepower, anything can be broken.

The poor people are all over Bangkok, in the low-paying jobs: waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, construction workers, etc. They are like Mexicans in the US, everywhere, invisible, and the country would fall apart if they are not there. The taxi drivers blocked major intersections a few days ago, in support of the red shirts, and Thaksin has been making videos which are played to huge crowds of red shirts.

I expect there will either be a coup or another military intervention or the resignation of the government in the next couple of weeks.

Such is life in Thailand. Sphere: Related Content