Seeing Red

As some of you may or may not know, Thailand is in the middle of a somewhat precarious time in terms of politics and government. In the Land of Smiles, nothing says "just another day in the city" like a good ol' fashioned coup d'etat. In a country where there has been 16 coups in the memories of many of the population, yet another political meltdown in the streets of Bangkok should not be a surprise or a point of concern. However, there is always room for breaking away from the status quo and that's what seems to be happening at the moment. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Thai politics let me give you my fairly uninformed, foreigner level rundown of what seems to be happening.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Thaksin who was elected to be prime minister and he did some good stuff for Thailand. During his term he helped to alleviate some of the burden of poverty, did work on setting up accessible healthcare for the poor and worked on fighting drugs in the country. The poor people of mostly Northern Thailand loved him. Unsurprisingly, Thaksin became ridiculously wealthy in the time leading up to his election and while he was in office. We're talking billionaire in a country where most people make 400 dollars a month.  Sooo people got suspicious. He was ousted in a coup (how predictable) and was convicted of all sorts of money and corruption related charges in absentia (because he ran away to the UAE or Cambodia or both). Because the poor people of the North felt that Thaksin has done so much for them they have been very pissed off ever since he got the boot and they have been protesting and making themselves heard ever since. They wear red shirts (whereas the anti-Thaksin people wear yellow shirts) Last April they blew up some stuff, managed to get the ASEAN summit in Pattaya cancelled due to protests and a few people got killed in Bangkok and it was general mayhem. But as things do here, once tourism was being affected and people started choosing to go to Vietnam or Malaysia instead of Thailand, things calmed down. 

Fast forward 10 months...Feb. 2010 a Thai court ruled to take away half of Thaksin's fortunes because they claim it was gained through corruption and fraud. We're talking BILLIONS of dollars here. Well the red shirts didn't like that one bit and have vowed to topple the government (which was not elected but was put in place during the 2006 coup). Abihist the current (unelected) prime minister doesn't like the sounds of that so he is having nothing of it. So we find ourselves where we are this weekend. The Reds have decided that it's time to boot the government out that once booted them out. They have rallied what they claim is going to be "a million" red shirt protesters from around Thailand and they are meeting in Bangkok this weekend to get shit done. The government has authorized the Internal Security Act from March 11-23 which pretty much means they can do anything they want (curfews, arrests, checkpoints and other general Orwellian delights) and people are shutting in waiting for the proverbial shit to hit the fan. Ironically enough the Reds have been arming themselves with "feces and fermented fish bombs" to throw at the 50,000 troups that have been sent to Bangkok. So I guess the shit will actually hit the fan literally. 

Anyway, in the interest of safety my school cancelled classes on Friday and it looks like Monday may be a no go as well. I'm not too concerned but maybe I'm being naive. If even half of the million predicted demonstrators show up things could flare up quickly. They have ended up with explosives and gunfire in the past. 

Anyway, if you want to keep up to snuff on what's going on the best place to look is on the Bangkok Post website here. The UDD is the official name of the Red Shirt protestors.   

If things do get violent it not too near where I live so don't get worried if you see tanks and bombs and what have you on TV.

Since my blogging skills have gone to shit and I never find the time to update it's probably best to check the Bangkok post to see what's going on.

Cheers from the coup capital of the world

J