Thai Uprising

In 2006, the previous prime minister of Thailand, billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, was accused of massive corruption and deposed by a military junta in a bloodless coup. In 2011, his sister Yingluck Shinawatra won a subsequent election and continues to rule with broad support from the rural provinces, due in part to generous and probably unsustainable price supports for rice farmers. Despite her election, it is widely believed that her brother continues to direct the government by videoconference from exile in Dubai. 

In November of this year, Yingluck introduced an amnesty bill which would have allowed her brother to return to the country and avoid criminal charges. That measure was defeated in the Senate while a proposed amendment to the Constitution which would have given the party more control was similarly denied by the Constitutional Court. 

Both sides took to the streets in protest, but the pro-government group was much smaller and soon evaporated. The anti-government group, determined to rid the country once and for all of the influence of the Shinawatra family began surrounding and peacefully occupying government buildings and ministries. By the end of November, however, the mood had turned nasty. The police brought out tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons, while protestors traded their whistles and banners for rocks and gas bombs. Cars were set on fire and police began enforcing a curfew in sensitive areas. In all, four people were killed, and more that two hundred had been wounded in clashes, and the city was nearing a breaking point. 

In a last-ditch effort to buy time and diffuse the growing anger of the demonstrators, now over 100,000 strong, the police were ordered to open their protective barricade of the Government House and allow protestors to occupy the compound in exchange for a temporary truce in honor of the revered Thai king's birthday. This victory in hand, anti-government protesters held a rally and then dispersed to observe the holiday at home. 

So this was the scene when I arrived in Thailand the day after the King's birthday. By the following night I began to see pickup trucks filled with demonstrators begin returning to the city from the outer districts and provinces, streaming steadily towards the gravitational center of the movement, Victory Monument. The massive roundabout around the monument as well as the broad avenue leading up to it was already packed with tens of thousands of people who were settling in for the night while protest leaders made fiery speeches mirrored on huge video screens erected around the site. 

From every side street people continued to arrive on foot. Police had set up checkpoints on most roads leading into the area to block cars containing more protestors but I saw several which had already been abandoned and pushed to the side. In any case, it was clear that no perimeter would be established around this swelling mass of people who seemed to be materializing from the very pavement of the city.

This morning, as the noisy but peaceful street protest began making its way through the streets towards the Government House, the prime minister announced she would dissolve Parliament and call for snap elections. However, this is unlikely to satisfy protestors, who believe that some of the government's popular economic policies, especially the rice subsidy, have essentially bought the votes of Thailand's rural farmers and will result in her being returned to power anyway. 

The wave of protesters are slowly converging on the seat of government and literally closing in on the prime minister. No one knows what will happen when this irresistible force meets the immovable mass of the central government. Will this tidal surge break against the waiting wall of riot police and fall back into the streets, or will this uprising finally wash the Shinawatra family out of power?