做事之善良
反觀亞洲多國的執政黨 執政者 "心無他黨 他人"
硬幹下去
這次可以聽到槍聲 他們真正要幹上一架
他們警方執行時之溫和
會讓目前台灣警政署的高官得意 我們多強硬
Thai Protesters Shut Down Airport
A military policeman tried to keep traffic flowing as antigovernment protesters massed near the army headquarters on Tuesday in Bangkok.
BANGKOK — Anti-government protesters swarmed into Bangkok’s main international airport late Tuesday, prompting officials to cancel all departing flights and bringing Thailand’s political stalemate to a crisis point.
Multimedia
Thomas Fuller on Protests in Bangkok (mp3) 
Antigovernment protesters on Tuesday outside of Bangkok’s main new airport.
As the protesters occupied the highway to the airport on the outskirts of the city, traffic to the airport slowed to a trickle. Separately, elsewhere in Bangkok, a group of demonstrators fired handguns and beat government supporters with metal rods in fierce clashes, injuring six people, according to video footage shown on Thai television. City emergency services officials put the number higher, saying at least 11 people were hurt, according to Reuters.
The incursion into Suvarnabhumi airport, as the capital’s new airport is known, represented a bold and serious challenge to the government, which in recent days has sought to placate the protestors and has tried to avoid confrontation with them.
Riot police were called into the airport complex late Tuesday and squared off with protestors in and around the terminal.
“For the safety of all passengers, I have to stop all the flight operations and close all exits in the passenger terminal until the situation returns to normal,” Sereerat Prasutanon, director of Suvarnabhumi airport, said.
“I’m very worried about the situation now,” Mr. Sereerat said. “I think it’s time that the army comes out and helps to take care of the situation.”
Suvarnabhumi airport is the world’s 18th largest in terms of passenger traffic, handling 41 million passengers last year. It is the main gateway for tourists and businesspeople arriving in Thailand and a major transit hub for Southeast Asia.
Earlier, protestors put razor wire across the entrance to the airport, leaving only one lane of the main highway open and causing severe congestion.
Throughout the day Tuesday, thousands of protestors kept the Thai government on the run, blocking the entrance to the government’s temporary offices at the old airport north of the city and massing in front of Army headquarters. In the violent clashes, one pro-government supporter was shown pleading for his life as protesters wielded long knives at his throat.
Tuesday was the second day of what the leaders of the long-running protest vowed would be their final push to unseat the government of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat. On Monday, protestors forced the cancellation of an important session of Parliament and temporarily cut electricity supply to the police headquarters.
Many Thais have grown frustrated with the protests, which have been held on and off for about three years.
The Thai print media, which over the past three years has been generally critical of the government and supportive of the protests, has recently run articles skeptical of the daily street demonstrations.
One columnist in the Nation newspaper Tuesday called the protests a “never-ending saga that is futile and a drain on society.”
“A rethink has become an imperative to put an end to the political turmoil,” the columnist wrote. “It is time for all sides to stop the political melodrama.”
The People’s Alliance for Democracy, as the group leading the movement to unseat the government calls itself, still has a remarkably loyal following, mainly among middle- and upper-class Thais, students and some union members.
The alliance raided and took over the prime minister’s office compound in August, forcing the government to operate out of the VIP terminal of Don Muang airport, the capital’s older airport which is now used exclusively for domestic flights. On Monday, protestors blocked access to the government offices at Don Muang.
“You don’t have to doubt what we will do next,” Somsak Kosaisuk, a protest leader, said Tuesday from a temporary stage set up at Don Muang airport. “First, we will not let the cabinet use this place for their meetings anymore. Second, wherever they go for their meetings, we have our special troops that will follow them.”
Somchai Wongsawat, the prime minister, is scheduled to return late Wednesday from a trip to Peru, where he attended a summit meeting of Asia Pacific leaders. Protestors say they plan to disrupt a cabinet meeting that was initially planned for Wednesday but may be pushed back.
The underlying conflict in Thailand is over the question of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s role in Thai politics. Mr. Thaksin, deposed in a coup two years ago and convicted in absentia last month for abuse of power in a highly politicized trial, now reportedly says he is eager to return to Thailand.
“With me at the helm I can bring confidence quickly back to Thailand,” Mr. Thaksin was quoted saying in an interview with Arabian Business, a magazine based in the United Arab Emirates, where he is believed to be in exile. “We have to find a mechanism under which I can go back, that is why I must tell you that I will go back into politics.”
With Mr. Thaksin still abroad, protestors say their first goal is to remove the current government, which it accuses of being Mr. Thaksin’s proxy.
Yet as the Thai economy slows down amid the global financial crisis and as the stalemate between the government and the protestors deepens, an increasing number of people are hoping for an end to the incessant protests.
“How is it going to end?” said Bharavee Boonsongsap, a 34-year-old producer for MTV Thailand. “I keep asking people but they have no answer. Thais are fighting Thais. People have become aggressive, and even children have been taught to hate the opposite side.”
Janesara Fugal contributed reporting from Bangkok.
Thailand
Desperate days
Nov 27th 2008 | BANGKOK
From The Economist print edition
The anti-government mob goes all-out to cause chaos
A LAST, desperate attempt by Thailand’s royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) to cause chaos and force the army to seize power looked dangerously close to succeeding as we went to press on November 27th. The prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, pleaded with soldiers to stay in their barracks and a spokesman for the ruling party said that if they did not, supporters should block tanks with their cars. Two days earlier the PAD’s yellow-shirted supporters had seized Bangkok’s main international airport, cutting all flights. The next day the army chief, General Anupong Paochinda, had urged the government to call fresh elections and the PAD to cease its protests. But both sides spurned his call, increasing the chances of army intervention.
No happy landingsThe general was forced to speak out by the growing violence on the capital’s streets. On November 25th PAD “guards” had shot at government supporters on a Bangkok motorway. On the morning of the 26th explosions were heard around both the main airport, Suvarnabhumi, and the capital’s second airport (where the government has had its temporary offices since the PAD’s seizure of Government House in August). Later, police said government supporters had shot an anti-government activist in Chiang Mai, in the north.
The PAD promised to summon a crowd of over 100,000 this week for its “final battle” to topple the government, which is allied to Mr Somchai’s brother-in-law, Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister deposed in the coup of 2006. But only a fraction of that number turned out. The PAD’s increasingly thuggish tactics have lost it much of the support it had from middle-class Bangkokians.
However, despite its dwindling support, the PAD’s remaining crowds, a few tens of thousands at most, have been left unchecked to create havoc. The government and the police, having suffered fierce criticism from pro-PAD newspapers after deadly clashes in October, have stood back, hoping that the protesters’ excesses would lose them support. The army has so far declined to stage a coup, as the PAD wants. But it has also refused to help the police tackle the protesters, who claim support from Queen Sirikit.
It is now three years since the PAD’s founder, Sondhi Limthongkul, began holding rallies to protest at corruption and abuses of power by Mr Thaksin. The 2006 coup seemed to grant the PAD its wish. His Thai Rak Thai party, whose policies of cheap health care and microcredit had won strong support from rural voters, was subsequently dissolved. But last December, after 15 months of dismal army-backed rule, voters returned to power a coalition led by Mr Thaksin’s new People’s Power Party (PPP), prompting the PAD to resume its protests.
The Thai crisis is complex and the motives of its actors are not always clear. But it has increasingly looked like a fight to the death by the country’s traditional, royalist elite against a threat to its dominance from an authoritarian but highly popular leader from outside that Bangkok-based clique. The PAD claims that Mr Thaksin is plotting to overthrow the revered King Bhumibol and install a republic. This is probably untrue. But the businessman-turned-politician was becoming a rival to the king for the public’s affections. The PAD, arguing that the masses are too “uneducated” to choose sensible leaders and resist vote-buying, wants to restore the semi-democracy of the 1980s, increasing the influence of the army, palace and royalist bureaucracy and diluting the popular vote.
Mr Thaksin, despite recently having been convicted in absentia for corruption, is not giving up yet. He recently staged a rally of around 70,000 of his red-shirted supporters at a sports stadium, to address them by telephone. The exiled ex-leader is promising another big gathering in December. His main message seems to be: I am still popular and still here. Some diehard supporters have sent a tougher message, threatening to bomb the PAD’s rallies. Several PAD supporters have been killed or maimed in explosions this month. However, it is unclear which of these were caused by the group’s foes and which by its own bombs.
The government, abandoning Bangkok to gather in Chiang Mai, Mr Thaksin’s home turf, insists it will not budge. Busy dodging bands of marauding protesters, its ministers have been doing precious little governing, at a time when Thailand’s exports are crumbling, its vital tourist trade faces collapse and unemployment seems likely to soar. The courts may soon dissolve the PPP for alleged vote-buying in last December’s election. But Mr Thaksin already has a third party, Puea Thai, to take its place, with a cousin, Chaisit Shinawatra, reportedly lined up to lead it. The Thaksinites seem likely to win a fair election.
More unpredictable than ever, Thai politics is in a dangerous phase. Even if there is not a “hard” coup, some sort of softer military-judicial coup is possible—perhaps like the state of emergency imposed last year in Bangladesh—putting a civilian front on a government backed by the army and palace. But if this happens, Mr Thaksin’s increasingly angry redshirts threaten to take the place of the royalist yellow-shirts, hitting the streets to bring down the new government. Three years on, it is hard to foresee a happy ending to Thailand’s political strife, just a variety of sad ones.
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