Federico Ferrara:
Here are some comments I offered in a short email interview with a Reuters correspondent in Bangkok.
1. What happens from here. Do the red shirts go underground with their leadership now detained (or in the case of Seh Daeng, killed)? In some ways they had very much a top-down leadership structure with the main leaders rotating on stage almost daily to rally their groups of supporters. Now with that structure lost, can they continue to mobilise in the way that they have in recent weeks? Or are they such a grass roots organisation that they can simply continue with their leaders locked up?
I did read some speculation that the movement will go "underground" but I think it's premature to speak of this particular outcome. The Red Shirt movement at this point has no reason to do anything but stay well "above ground" and continue to pursue its democratic agenda in a peaceful manner. There could be a bit of a lull in their activities now, but I would expect that if the government keeps their leaders in jail (demonstrating obvious double-standards, compared to the kid-gloves treatment afforded to the PAD in the wake of the airport occupations) it won't be long before this turns into another cause célèbre. The only scenario where I can envision the movement going clandestine is if the government unleashes the kind of paranoid wave of repression that some observers fear (similar to what happened after the 1976 crackdown). But it's simply too early to tell.
2. What does this mean for the Puea Thai Party? Will they be emboldned by the violence in Bangkok or discredited by the unrest, particularly in the north and northeast?
My view is that the UDD and Peua Thai are most vulnerable to losing some of the support they enjoy among middle-class voters in Bangkok and the Central Region. In the North and the Northeast, I don't think that either the UDD or Peua Thai will suffer that much. The people in the provinces aren't likely to shed any tears for the fact that some rich punk in Bangkok can no longer shop at CentralWorld when dozens of people "like them" lay dead at the hands of the government. If anything, those in the North/Northeast who already sympathize with the Red Shirts will likely react with justifiable disgust at the sight of upper class and upper-middle class citizens/media in Bangkok who are making such a scene out of mourning the loss of a shopping mall while they continue to shrug off (and in some cases celebrate) the murder of 80 people.
3. What does this mean for Abhisit. He now in some ways is tarnished by being so closely involved in a bloody crackdown that has cost many lives. Does that hurt him? Or is he seen as a leader who restored order to a capital under threat protesters whose demands began to be seen by many across the country as unreasonable as the days wore on?
On the issue of Abhisit, I believe that what I said a few days ago still stands. To paraphrase the observations I offered to you on May 16, my guess is that Abhisit is finished already, as he is irreparably tarnished by the brutality with which his government dealt with these demonstrations-- not to mention the deluge of lies it has told to slander its opponents or cover up its own responsibility for what may well turn out to have been (based on official figures at least) the worst massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in the history of Thailand. I said before that I thought Abhisit would be thrown overboard when his patrons switch from crackdown mode to "reconciliation" mode (of course, by "reconciliation" they only mean restoring the lumpenproletariat's long-lost acquiescence). Abhisit is now too spent a force and too polarizing a figure to offer any hope that he can successfully carry out this (or indeed any kind of) "reconciliation." That said, it's anyone's guess when exactly he will be forced/pressured/allowed to leave office. Some say he will be gone soon. Others think the Constitutional Court will force him out (maybe in a couple of months). Others still maintain that it would be too messy/risky to change a government now, so he will stay on as a lame duck (more like a dead duck) until the military re-shuffle is completed. There are good arguments in favor of each of these scenarios, so I'm not sure exactly how this plays out in the near term. Regardless, he is done. At this point, he is a mere placeholder.
