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| Southeast Asia |
| Thai red shirts not finished |
| 2010-06-03 |
| [Straits Times] THAI anti-government protesters have vowed to return to the streets after an army crackdown ended their nine-week protest, but with most of their leaders detained or in hiding, it could take months to revive their campaign. Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy is still recovering from modern Thailand's worst political violence, which killed 88 people and wounded more than 1,800 as troops dispersed protesters from central Bangkok. The occupation of an upscale commercial district by thousands of red-shirted protesters representing the rural and urban poor decimated the vital tourism industry, sent foreign investors fleeing Thailand's capital markets, and will shave a point or two from projected economic growth this year, the government says. Calm has returned since troops forcibly dislodged protesters demanding immediate elections from their fortified encampment in ritzy central Bangkok on May 19, providing a window of opportunity to dip back into what had been one of Asia's hottest emerging markets. The window might not stay open for long. Thailand remains fundamentally divided between what some analysts see as a peasant and proletariat movement largely backing ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and what they call an aristocratic 'establishment elite' of royalists, military brass, bureaucrats and the educated middle class. Mr Thaksin, ousted in a 2006 coup, or his proxy parties have won every election in Thailand over the past decade, and would most likely win the next one, whenever that is. |
| Posted by:Fred |