DRAMATIC SCENES of red-shirted protesters hurling blood at the house of the Thai prime minister might have made great theatre but the “million-man march” aimed at toppling the government appears to be fizzling out.
As the protests, which drew tens of thousands but nowhere near a million Thais to Bangkok, wind down, investors have welcomed the lack of confrontation.
There has been no violence but nor has there been much to cheer the protesters, who appear to have fallen short of their aims. After days in which they brought the streets of the capital to a standstill, Thailand’s fundamental political divisions remain.
“You say you are going to get a million people out on the streets and you only get 100,000? Something went wrong,” said James Klein, head of the Asia Foundation in Bangkok.
“It means that you don’t have the strong emotional backing you thought you had.”
The lack of progress will also be a blow to the political ambitions of Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister. Mr Thaksin, who lives in exile to avoid a prison sentence, had hoped to use the march as a vehicle for his political rehabilitation.
He is currently in Montenegro, where he has citizenship, it was revealed yesterday.
The protesters converged on Bangkok last weekend to demand the resignation of the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister. He refused to quit, and the demonstrations have continued since then, but with decreasing intensity.
Now in their thousands, demonstrators rallied yesterday in a tropical downpour near the private home of Mr Abhisit and hurled bags of their blood over his compound wall to symbolise their “sacrifice for democracy”.
The overall mood was light as they moved on to the British and US embassies to deliver letters explaining their cause.
The exercise has been a disappointment for the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, the umbrella group that organised what was originally billed as the million-man march.
But the lack of violence has gone some way to rehabilitate a movement that had become associated with political thuggery after its supporters set fire to buses and threw explosives at army lines in the capital last April.
It has also reassured investors, with markets rising more than 6.3 per cent in the past week. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)