By the time the rally reached Soi 71, traffic was backed up on both sides of the road, and walking the length of the street, there appeared to be about 3000 people lining the side of the road, with more peering out from apartment windows and shop fronts, and others looking disgruntled in the snarled traffic trying to move in the opposite direction. Alongside, some cheered, some took photos or recorded videos, and some of the younger observers seemed to get carried away by the party vibe.
Abhisit’s spokesman, Thepthai, scoffed at the apparent support for the red shirts, saying that each protester was given 2000 to 3000 Baht for their toil under the searing Bangkok sun, with sidewalk onlookers allegedly given 500Baht each. Earlier reports from the English-language newspapers in Thailand, which have taken a condescending line with the red shirts, suggested that rural demonstrators were paid to travel to Bangkok.
But even if true, it would be nothing new in Thailand. Voters are regularly offered financial inducements by some or all electoral candidates, and when the anti-Thaksin ‘yellow shirts’, or PAD took to the streets of Bangkok in 2008 in their ultimately successful bid to oust the pro-Thaksin elected government, demonstrators were paid one way or another to stay out on the streets.
The question of the make-up of red shirt support is clearly not just an academic debate. If the red shirt protest is to have staying power, it will likely need to transcend its perceived regional north/northeast orientation and synonymy with Thaksin. Despite the almost-nightly video link addresses by the former premier, red shirt leaders in Bangkok have kept references to Thaksin to a minimum, apparently recognising that he remains a divisive figure for many in Thailand.
So, can the red shirt leaders slowly shift from being tied to their fugitive exiled leader? Chambers seems to think so. ‘The longer Thaksin stays abroad, the less Puea Thai (the latest successor party to Thaksin’s own Thai Rak Thai) and the UDD must depend upon him,’ he says.
Getting more of Bangkok’s middle classes onside and engaged could help the red shirts keep large numbers on the streets for a longer, and give the movement a broader support-base. All this said, the red shirts may already have some nascent middle class support, not least because the middle class is a more complicated entity than the homogenous, anti-red shirt entity it is sometimes portrayed as.
‘My research suggests that a large component of the “urban middle class” is actually comprised of rural migrants who…are working in lower-level, white collar occupations,’ says Sophorntavy Vorng of the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, who has studied Bangkok’s middle class. ‘[So] what’s clear is that class demarcations in Thailand…are a lot more porous than most characterisations of the so-called class divide actually capture.’
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olmilla marlo
what a sad part of Thai history , i do hope that Thai government can solve this
in peaceful way ,also grant the Thai people their desire to a have a peaceful ,Thailand”", viva Thailand”"”