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...supporters in by bus, tractor, boat and pickup truck, the Bangkok-based press warned of the havoc the rural hordes might wreak. City governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra advised residents to "please stay home," lest the demos degenerate into rioting as did a red protest last year. The overall mood was one of fortress Bangkok being surrounded by alien beings. Then the unexpected happened. As tens of thousands of red-shirt vehicles wound through Bangkok streets on March 20 in a miles-long caravan, members of the city's lower and middle classes emerged to cheer on the crimson convoy. Short-order...
...shirt leaders describe their movement - and the designation is more than a rhetorical flourish. Within a generation, Thailand was transformed from an exotic R&R playground for American soldiers fighting in Vietnam into Southeast Asia's manufacturing base, the world's top rice exporter and one of the most inviting vacation destinations on the planet. Yet even though per capita annual incomes reached nearly $4,000 in 2009, many Thais are still stuck in rice paddies or fish canneries wondering how the nation's economic boom bypassed them. Thailand now has one of the worst income disparities in the region...
...loyalty to a fallen politician. The movement's leaders now include a motley crew of populist orators, social activists and opportunist politicians - all preaching the gospel of class struggle. "I don't even like Thaksin," says Thienchai Mangmeetanasothon, owner of a small business in Bangkok. "It's not about one person. It's about how the government doesn't care about people who aren't rich...
...months and hijacking Bangkok's two airports for a week. They only dispersed when a court dissolved the then ruling party as punishment for electoral fraud, allowing an Abhisit-led coalition to form through parliamentary backroom deals. "This is not a government chosen by the people," says Natthawut Saikua, one of the red shirts' top leaders. "Abhisit, get out and return power to the people...
...support is strongest - because of safety concerns makes Abhisit look even further removed from the very commoners he vowed to protect when taking office. On March 21, red-shirt protestors used gallons of their own blood to inscribe 70 meters of canvas in a gruesome display of protest art. One oft-repeated message: "The land is burning," a reference to the swidden fires up-country but also a clear warning to the urban élite. (Read "Thailand Braces For Anti-Government Protest...