08:33
Tieng Anh Vui
THE finance ministry in Bangkok is no longer a calm haven of fiduciary responsibility. Since being stormed by protesters on November 25th it has become the headquarters of a would-be revolution. Its leader, Suthep Thaugsuban, has held court there, surrounded by the accessories of Thai-style street protests: crates of bottled water, mounds of free food and endless stalls selling everything the dedicated protester might need, from hand clappers to plastic matting for sleeping on.
And lots of T-shirts. They are colour-coded to show that this is the Thai establishment on the streets rather than their erstwhile “red shirt” opponents, the supporters of the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and her government. Mr Suthep and his acolytes wear only black, to emphasise that they still mourn for the supreme patriarch of Thai Buddhism, who died recently, and yellow, the colour of the monarchy. Their dedication to these two institutions, many of them think, bestows moral force on a week-old explicit campaign to overthrow the government, elected with a big majority two years ago.
The spark for mass street demonstrations was the government’s cack-handed attempt to pass an amnesty bill. Though it would have pardoned many thousands involved in criminal and corruption cases over the past decade, it was specifically designed to benefit Ms Yingluck’s elder brother and a former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who faces a jail term for corruption if he returns to Thailand. Deposed in a coup in 2006, Mr Thaksin remains highly divisive.
The amnesty bill passed parliament’s lower house, where the Shinawatras’ Pheu Thai party holds a big majority. But it aroused such hostility from a swathe of people aghast at its sweeping nature that on November 11th the senate roundly rejected it.
Until recently Mr Suthep was an MP for the opposition Democrat Party, and he was once a deputy prime minister. He first took to the streets against the amnesty bill on November 4th, but then carried on protesting in his tented camp in the government district. Democrat Party supporters were bussed in from its southern heartlands. On November 24th the protest drew hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr Suthep’s intention in massing so many people in the heart of Bangkok was not immediately clear. But the following day he was explicit: the aim now was to “uproot” the “Thaksin regime” using street power. He commanded his black shirts to seize government ministries. On November 27th they fanned out through the capital, surrounding another ten state offices. They even managed to empty the Department of Special Investigation, Thailand’s version of the FBI.
But just as the government overreached with the amnesty bill, so has Mr Suthep. Ms Yingluck alienated many red-shirt supporters because the amnesty bill would let off those responsible for ordering the shooting of scores of their comrades when they themselves were out on the streets, in 2010, against the (undemocratic) Democrat government of the time. Similarly, Mr Suthep has alienated many who opposed the amnesty bill but do not believe in ousting an elected government in a putsch.
Other Democrat Party leaders have studiously distanced themselves from Mr Suthep’s street tactics. They have also queried what his “people’s assembly”, the body that he suggests would replace Ms Yingluck’s government, might be. Mr Suthep is increasingly being viewed as an opportunist, and the number of people marching with him has fallen.
Meanwhile the government has played a weak hand well. Though Ms Yingluck lost moral authority over the amnesty bill, she has made up for it. Mindful of the bloodshed in 2010, she insists the police will never use force against the protesters. The courts have ordered the arrest of Mr Suthep, but so far no attempt has been made to seize him. There has been little violence. What is more, most of the key government offices, including the prime minister’s, are now safely sealed off by concrete barriers and razor wire. The barriers have already been dubbed “Bangkok’s Berlin Wall”, but the government continues to function, despite the fall of the finance ministry.
Ms Yingluck probably hopes that, so long as she lets them roam around without doing serious damage, the protesters will run out of puff. King Bhumibol’s 86th birthday falls on December 5th, and the assumption is that most will be off the streets by then, out of reverence for him. On November 28th Ms Yingluck easily survived a no-confidence vote in parliament. Provided that the army does not intervene—which it shows no sign of doing—she might get through this turbulence. But not before the body-politic has been damaged by yet another spasm of street politics.
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