Oh, and I’m pleased to report that South Korea’s Girls’ Generation K-pop group did hold their concert here after all. Sadly, I did not attend.
Monday morning and they’ve held a meeting in the wife’s office. They’ll monitor the situation on a day-by-day basis, they want everyone to be sure the office knows how to reach them quickly if need be, and everyone should do as much work as possible now, because no one knows what could happen suddenly or how long the next office closure will last.
Meanwhile, just low-level violence since yesterday afternoon’s grenade blasts. Someone shooting at the protesters near the Government Complex in northern Bangkok but no further injuries. The government’s Center for the Administration of Peace and Order is mulling invocation of an emergency decree, which would effectively mean martial law, but the citizenry here never takes too kindly to that sort of thing. But with the February 2 election fast approaching – that’s less than two weeks now – it looks increasingly likely that the poll will not proceed smoothly at all, to say the least. We could be in for some interesting times.
Wow. Now I know the situation is serious.
Quite a few of the armored vehicles brought into Bangkok for this past Saturday’s Army Day or Armed Forces Day or whatever they call it have yet to return upcountry. Supposedly for local units to study them for training purposes. Needless to say, this is adding to the coup rumors.
Clear 30-second video released of the suspect throwing one of his grenades yesterday. If you can name him, you get a 500,000-baht (a little over US$15,000) reward.
I wonder whose ID photo they were circulating online yesterday. Clearly they don’t know the guys name after all.
The army is warning of more violence after intelligence shows weapons and explosives are being moved into Bangkok. And the wife tells me she hears the protesters will be marching near our little corner of central Bangkok today. We will both be out and about but will be careful.
Tuesday night and now the government has declared a state of emergency and imposed an emergency decree in Bangkok and the surrounding areas for 60 days. But it’s not clear what that will mean. It’s a step below martial law. The government can impose a curfew, or it can ban political gatherings, or it can detain individuals without charging them, or it can call out the army to restore order. But what will it do? Nothing yet. In 2010, it was under an emergency decree that the Democrat government sent in the army to clear out the red shirts, resulting in more than 90 deaths and widespread arson. But the relationship between the army and this government is not so cozy, and the army has consistently stayed intent on showing it was not going to be so quick to obey without good reason.
I can’t imagine the protesters would all go home just because the government said so. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Meanwhile, they’ve named a suspect in Sunday’s grenade attacks, a private first class in the army. But through his lawyer, he insists he was upcountry taking his pregnant wife to the doctor and says he can prove it. His military status is uncertain though, because it seems he was suspended from duty for reasons unknown even before all the trouble.
And Thaksin, the dear old boy himself, is publicly offering a 10-million-baht (US$304,000) reward for the bomber. Uh huh, and I hear O.J. is still looking for that killer too.
Siam Sam, my reading of the situation (although I have been here a lot less time than you) is that although in theory the Government now has all these powers but in practice they are quite reluctant to use them because it seems theres a pretty big chance that both the police and the army would refuse to obey orders to clear protestors by force.
Lets see over the next week how it unfolds. So far I’m still going to work every day as normal just like I did every day during the “shutdown”.
Did anyone else receive notice that Sam posted, and the post ain’t here?
Not I.
Oh no! I’m being redacted by the powers that be! :eek:
The army has made it clear that it is reluctant to get involved in this. The police though, I think they’ve been ordered to keep confrontation at a minimum but are still smarting from one of their officers being killed and would love to start busting heads. There seems to be a rift between the army and the police too that is growing more publicly visible.
I don’t expect anything much to change in the coming days. The executive decree gives the government more legal powers to act, although really, how bad does it have to get before the government decides to act? Down to Somalia level? This whole situation was sparked by the present government pushing through death-penalty charges against Suthep for the deaths of all those red shirts in 2010. That was the initial spark for this most recent round of trouble. But instead of meekly consulting his attorney, he’s taken to the streets with a helluva lot of supporters who don’t like the Shinawatras, and the government is afraid the tables will be turned on them and they’ll be the ones facing death-penalty charges in the future thanks to the precedent they themselves have set. It’s really fucked.
Suthep has, of course, vowed to ignore the emergency decree. Business leaders are already coming out and begging the government to revoke it, saying it’s bad for an already downward-spiraling business environment.
I don’t expect anything much to change during maybe the first month, but the decree is good for only 60 days, and I figure they’ll feel they have to do something before the time is up if they don’t want to look foolish. So figure on some sort of action in Late February or early March, that’s my guess. But you never know around here.
And just this morning (Wednesday morning), a red-shirt leader was shot and wounded with an M16 way up in Udon Thani province. That’s far from Bangkok, up in the Northeast on the Lao border. The location of the shooting says as much as the shooting itself, because Udon Thani is one of the stauncher red-shirt strongholds within the staunch red-shirt stronghold of the Northeast. Thirty shells were recovered by police, but it looks like he’ll be okay.
Sam,
I am unschooled in the ways of political maneuvering. Does the shooting show that anybody is a target? The normally red shirt area is losing faith in red shirts?
Fight my ignorance please.
The perps weren’t caught, so exactly who they were is speculation. But I would guess yellow-shirt (anti-government) elements striking “behind the lines,” so to speak. The victim was a top official of the red-shirt (pro-government) Rak Udon (Love Udon, as in Udon Thani province) group in the province.
Meanwhile, the cops nabbed two men on a motorcycle in northern Bangkok early this morning. They were carrying 23 small homemade bombs, a gun and ammo. Plus a knife and a knuckle duster.
Probably just on their way to a Scout meeting.
The red shirt shot this morning was pretty high profile, name of Kwanchai Praipana. He has his own radio show where he spews anti-yellow-shirt screeds and played a prominent role in the 2010 violence in Bangkok. The authorities figure this was a tit-for-tat shooting after the recent bombings in Bangkok. Hopefully they’ll send someone with better aim next time.
Someone tossed a Molotov cocktail at a red-shirt rally up in Chiang Mai in the North last night, another red-shirt stronghold, but missed the crowd. So it’s spreading a bit even if they are proving inept.
Still largely peaceful though compared with Ukraine. There are protests there too, and BBC usually has Ukraine and Thailand in back-to-back reports. Looked like a section of Kiev was on fire today.
There has to be action sooner than that. The elections are feb 2nd, the yellow shirts have said they will boycott them and try and block them from happening. I am guessing the emergency decree is partly so they can use force to clear protestors from disrupting the election…. The caretaker government so far shows no sign of postponing the election despite the calls from the Electoral Committee to postpone it.
Election day is when I’m guessing things will get ugly.
I’m not convinced the election will be held on February 2 despite what the government says.
Yesterday (Wednesday), the first full day of the state of emergency and the emergency decree, did not work out quite like the government had hoped it would. In defiance, the protesters surrounded the office of the Defense Ministry’s permanent secretary (which is not the same thing as the defense minister), forcing the prime minister and her foreign minister to flee out the back when the protesters arrived, heh. 
They also surrounded the Labor Ministry, trapping Labor Minister Chalerm Yubamrung inside. He’s the shitbird whose son got away scot-free with killing a cop in cold blood in front of a packed pub full of witnesses in October 2001, which. I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the Board before.
As well, protesters surrounded Royal Thai Police headquarters and defaced the building’s name sign.
So all in all, not a good first day for the emergency decree.
The authorities say they have identified Sunday’s bomber and that he belongs to the same group responsible for last Friday’s bombing and the attack on Democrat Party leader and ex-prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s house. But they’ve not yet released his name publicly.
Sam, I just want to say again how we appreciate these news bulletins you give us. I read our paper, and a couple of online news sources, and see almost no mention of the unrest in Thailand. A little about the Ukraine, but not even much there. It’ good to have a source giving us a “man in the streets” perspective. Even if there was mention, how many would remind readers of the past history of significant names, like the Labor Minister?