Flights at Bangkok's main international airport were canceled after anti-government protesters stormed the building, stranding thousands of travelers.
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BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov. 25 -- Activists trying to bring down
Thailand's
government seized key parts of the capital's main airport Tuesday,
forcing authorities to cancel all flights and dealing another blow to
the country's reeling tourist industry.
"We want to seize the airport to show the media that the prime minister
cannot control anything in Thailand," Suwan Kansanoh, a retired
government official who was among the protesters, told journalists by phone.
The airport
raid was the culmination of two days of demonstrations billed by the
anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy as the "final mass
rally" to oust the "killer government."
The government, led by Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, has refused
to resign, insisting that the overwhelming mandate it won in elections
held at the end of last year still stands.
At the core of the dispute lies the legacy of Thaksin Shinawatra,
the controversial telecommunications billionaire and former prime
minister who was removed from office in a military coup in 2006 amid
allegations of corruption and cronyism.
Thaksin inspires visceral hatred among PAD supporters, who believe
that the current government is his proxy. Somchai is the former prime
minister's brother-in-law.
But as last year's elections proved, Thaksin and his allies still
have the support of Thailand's rural poor -- a constituency he and his
successors have courted with cheap health care and subsidized loans.
Although PAD leaders had made bold predictions about this week's
demonstrations, the turnout, at about 20,000 people, has been smaller
than expected, and a threatened strike by state enterprise workers
caused little disruption. Political analysts say that despite their
success in disrupting operations at the airport, the movement is
struggling to maintain momentum.
"The reality is that they can't raise the numbers on the streets to
force anybody to do anything," said Chris Baker, a Bangkok-based
political scientist who has written a number of books on Thailand's
troubles.
The past two days had been mostly peaceful. But there was an
outbreak of violence on Tuesday night when PAD guards fired on
opponents. The shooters were apparently responding to pro-government
protesters who allegedly threw stones at a car carrying PAD members
returning from another rally. Local media reported that 11 people were
injured.
Although it has managed to paralyze the political process for the
past six months, the anti-government PAD has had little success in
articulating an alternative vision to end Thailand's political
stalemate.
Its platform of so-called "new politics" -- including a suggestion
of rolling back democratic representation to make 70 percent of
parliament appointed rather than elected --has found little traction
among the wider population.
Baker said the group, which has a largely middle-class, urban
support base, has started to fall victim to its own internal
contradictions. Unable to win at the ballot box, or frighten the
government into resigning, Baker said the group has been reduced to
trying to provoke the sort of violence that would force the army to
stage a coup. But that, in turn, is alienating its supporters.
"The people who support them are the sort of people who fear
disorder above all things, and they are starting to worry," he said.
Gen. Anupong Paojinda, the army chief, said there would be no coup, even if violence broke out.
"The armed forces have agreed that a coup cannot solve our country's
problems, and we will try to weather the current situation and pass
this critical time," Anupong told reporters in Bangkok.
Over the past two days, the police have taken a deliberately
nonconfrontational line, falling back as the PAD protesters, many of
them armed with iron bars, wooden clubs or sling shots, advanced. The
police tactics not only minimized the possibility of clashes, they also
allowed the protesters to spread so widely that the demonstration
became diffuse and directionless.
There are also economic pressures. Thailand is starting to feel the
pain of the global slowdown, and many here worry that political
paralysis is doing lasting damage to the country's ability to counter
the mounting economic threat. The closure of Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi
Airport will be another blow to a tourist industry already badly
damaged by previous violent clashes between protesters and police.
