Idle banter forum

So the latest round of political unrest seems to be over with the pro Thaksin Red Shirts packing up and going home.They certainly did'nt win too many friends,both local and overseas ,with their tactics.The government,with the military, seemed to handle the situation very well and acheived the desired outcome with little violence.One can only hope that this is the end of it all and the government can get on with running the country.One can also hope that this is the end of Thaksin as a political force and some of his followers do not try to intimidate the government with acts of terrorism.

the redshirt protest was defeated, due in part to the deployment of the army and police but also because a key redshirt leader saw that things were getting violent and decided to end it. unfortunately, none of the redshirt's concerns were addressed by any of this. if anything, they probably feel even more disenfranchised by the central government after these events.

one of the important points i've been reading in the press (bangkok post, BBC) is the difficulty for aphisit's government, since it was ushered into power after similar mass yellowshirt protests but did nothing to address the equally illegal activities of those mobs.

Well talking of Abhisit getting re-elected, as I mentioned in this story, last time around...

"the current beleaguered government led by Abhisit Vejjajiva came to power with the assistance of a military coup, two party dissolutions, a new constitution, an activist judiciary, implicit royal backing, an ultra-nationalist crisis, six months of escalating street provocation, military insubordination, and an economically disastrous airport shutdown."

Lets hope he doesn't need all that to get over the line again ;-)