Supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) scuffle with riot police and villagers during a march along a highway leading to the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, along the Cambodian border on Sept 19, 2009.By Thitinan Pongsudhirak
Bangkok Post
By demonstrating over a land area adjoining the ancient Preah Vihear temple complex last week ahead of the third anniversary of Thailand's latest military coup on Sept 19, a faction of the royalist-nationalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) shrewdly stole the thunder that was supposed to belong to the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra red-shirted movement. Weeks of build-up to the red shirts' anti-coup anniversary protest were eclipsed by the yellow shirts' days of escalation from patriotism and nationalism to chauvinism and veiled irredentism.
Under the aegis of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), the red shirts and their sit-ins at public gathering areas are a recurrent phenomenon. Their largest and most sustained street demonstration from late March to the Songkran riots has been instructive for them. They can protest all they want but they do not have the tipping point that comes with the right backing.
The red shirts have since acted with more restraint. As an evolving social movement, their numbers are wide but increasingly divided along the fault lines of Thaksin Shinawatra and the coup.
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