His sister is the nominal prime minister, but it’s widely acknowledged that she takes her orders from him. He vets the cabinet lists. He’s always meeting with top party and government officials in various locations of the world, where they receive their orders from him. He calls all the shots to this day.
Thursday morning and not much new. Another drive-by shooting in one place, a bombing in another, but no injuries. However, this is a little disconcerting: Radical reds ‘stocking arms’ for city fight. Give them half a chance and those bastards would burn Bangkok again, I reckon.
On the plus side, they’re saying air quality has improved due to the lighter traffic on the normally congested roads.
It seems to have settled down to a war of attrition between the two sides. A complete stalemate. The army is worried that a third-hand group may be behind the sporadic violence occurring now, but it’s largely peaceful now. The few attacks now all seem to happen late at night. The wife herself was out in the streets yesterday (Thursday), and the crowds remain huge and are not going away soon, but the government just ain’t budging.
The protest leaders did last night call for 500 volunteers to hunt down the prime minister, who has been hiding in undisclosed locations, but supposedly just to hound her once they find her, not kill her or anything like that. (Supposedly.) A Thai asked me yesterday what would happen in the US if the anyone called for 500 volunteers to hunt down President Obama, or any US president, and I just laughed and said they’d be in jail in no time. Charges of stalking if nothing else, never mind making threats to the US president.
I have to say that so far, this so-called shutdown of Bangkok has not inconvenienced me one iota. And the wife has already gotten a free week’s vacation out of it, and who knows when her office will reopen (although she is doing some work at home).
Tourism is taking a small hit but really not all that much, at least not yet. Protest action upcountry has been limited, so a lot of tourists are simply bypassing Bangkok and heading straight to destinations upcountry. A Canadian friend who works for the UN told me the mob was outside his office here in Bangkok on Tuesday. After an initial scare, they seem to have just been marching past. But they’d closed his office the day before due to info that it would be targeted that day but never showed up. The UN! What are they supposed to do? How this will all play out eventually is a complete mystery.
Well, bugger what I said about it being largely peaceful now and any violence occurring only at night. There was a bombing about 1pm this afternoon as Suthep was leading a march, not too far away from the Pathum Wan intersection in central Bangkok, where Siam Square and MBK Center are. The injured number 36, but none too seriously and no deaths. Suthep escaped unscathed. It’s not clear how close he was to the blast. The last I saw, CNN was saying two explosions, but local media are still reporting only one blast. They think it may have been an M26 fragmentation grenade. The wife was home today, so luckily she was not nearby.
They thought they saw where it was thrown from, and when protesters burst into the building, found a cache of military weapons and some police IDs and clothing. I saw the weapons on TV news, but I’m a little dubious about some of the clothing. Supposedly one item was a red cap – that’s red as in “red shirts” – with something like “Attacking Unit” embroidered on it. They didn’t show that, but it sure would be awfully convenient for the bombers to leave something like that behind. And what, they’re wearing special hats? Sounds a little fishy.
And a group of taxi, motorcycle taxi and passenger van drivers confronted protesters in North Bangkok to demand they stop blocking roads. Looks like it may be heating up after all.
Looks like one death in yesterday’s bombing, but it’s not clear if the death was from among one of the 36 injured or separate. But the protest leaders gave the family of the dead protester 1 million baht. That’s the equivalent of US$30,500 at the present exchange rate. When I heard that, I urged the wife to go out again. She replied, “Hey!” Ah well, I doubt they’d give a farang that much anyway.
And if you doubt the Thai hatred for the Shinawatra clan, check out this list of the Top Ten Worst Leaders in the world. Thaksin comes in first, Yingluck second, that amateur Adolf Hitler third. Maybe Thais have been stacking the deck a little? (Note that George W. Bush just squeaks ahead of Stalin at No. 12.)
I thank you for all the info you are giving…
But I hope you and yours stay safe first of all.
Ahem. A gentleman would offer to go out and be protest-bomb-bait for his lovely wife.
Well, Suthep comes in at #19, behind Ferdinand Marcos but ahead of Mao.
Interesting that this time the currency rate seems to be affected. Just as I need the Baht to stay strong against the dollar. Darn.
I see FB posts all the time from Mrs Shibb’s cousin and a former colleague who’ve been attending the protests.
The baht has been weakening in recent months anyway. It could be this just added to a momentum that was already there.
The injured toll from Friday’s bomb has gone up again. Now I’m hearing 39 injured. WTF??!? 
How does the injury toll keep going up? Someone doesn’t decide they were injured until a day or so later? Death tolls, those go up routinely of course, but the injury toll?
Could that be supporters of one side or the other deciding to go to the hospital as a way of underlining the seriousness of the situation? They’re not hurt THAT bad, but want to make a political point?
I suppose. I just saw that “scores” were injured, implying at least 40, but that could be the newspaper just wanting it to sound good.
There’s a smattering of foreigners getting involved. The farangs in this story are local residents and so at least have some clue about what’s going on. But what I usually see are tourists on holiday getting caught up in the overall carnival atmosphere of the street protests, so they decide to join the fun. But they’re getting involved in matters they know nothing about. They think it’s because the yellow shirts want democracy or the red shirts want democracy, so they jump in when really they’re completely ignorant of the nuances and machinations. It’s not at all uncommon to see backpackers from Khao San Road go campaigning for whichever side is holding their rally nearby. Foreigners have no place taking an active role on either side, IMHO. And even the ones who live here should not be up on any stage. (That one retired banker in the linked story is very right to worry about his visa now.)
Perhaps it has to do with one million baht…wondering if I can get my ex-wife a ticket to Bangkock. 
Does Thailand have a libertarian party?
No. Thank goodness.
Most Thai political parties are more about regional interest than political philosophy. A typical party’s platform might be, in effect,
“We want taxpayer money to be diverted to provinces controlled by Mafia Godfather B______ and his allies.”
Sometimes, when excess alcohol has been consumed, I engage rural Thais in political dialog: “But don’t you realize B______ is a thuggish crook?”
“Of course we do! But he’s our thuggish crook.”
(ETA: B and his party were banned from politics for corruption. But the party was reconstituted with a new name under B’s brother, and is presently allied with the Thaksin-controlled coalition government.)
A second bombing this afternoon (Sunday afternoon), this time at Victory Monument. The injured numbered 28 this time, no deaths, at least not yet. That’s two daylight bombings in about 48 hours’ time. Same grenade type in both attacks, an “RDG-5 type, made in Russia or China,” it says now, although before they said Friday’s might have been an M26, so who knows.
The wife and I were out and about today and did spend time in proximity to the Ratachaprasong and Pathum Wan intersections, which have also been shut down, and rode the Skytrain over a third, the Silom intersection. No blasts where we were, and indeed it resembled a big marketplace, with vendors set up selling their wares.
The wife’s office and I think all the schools and universities that have been closed this past week will reopen tomorrow. That could change if this keeps getting ugly.
It’s a bit confusing. The story linked in my previous post mentions two bombs/grenades and a security guard shot when he tried to chase the thrower. And we’re hearing this from other sources too, so I guess the 28 injured is from both grenades together. Not sure where the shot security guard figures, I assume he must be the 29th injured.
They have some good photo feeds of the thrower’s face. And apparently they’ve identified him, because besides the security-camera photos from onsite, I just looked at his ID photo. That’s already circulating on the Web. I’d say he’s fucked.
EDIT: And while they don’t include his ID photo, the Bangkok Post just put up some photos of the man in action.
My school was closed all last week, except for Friday. Why they decided to reopen on Friday, I have no idea. Less than half of my students showed up. We’re open all this coming week as far as I know.
Be careful out there. BBC is saying the protesters are starting to patrol central Bangkok themselves, as they don’t trust the police anymore. (Not that they ever trusted them that much to begin with.)