Who Will Blink First in Bangkok?

Leaders of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) have told the Thai government that it must dissolve parliament by noon on Monday or have hundreds of thousands of Redshirt demonstrators on the march around Bangkok, with the Army's 11th Infantry Regiment, where the prime minister has spent the last few days, a likely demonstration site for some of the group.

The statement came on Sunday while demonstrators celebrated in a carnival atmosphere on Ratchadamnoen Avenue. The crowd numbered around 600,000 by Sunday evening, according to UDD spokesman Sean Boonpracong. Other estimates put the crowd between 100,000 and 200,000.

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While this was far short of the “million man march” promoted by the UDD last week, the numbers may be enough to stifle traffic in Bangkok at the start of the working week, depending on where the demonstrators go.

At a press conference last week, senior Redshirt Jaran Dithapichai said that the demonstrators wanted to force the government to “clamp down” on the march, if they demonstrations did not lead to a dissolution. UDD spokespersons spoke openly, albeit vaguely, to foreign media about “civil war” in Thailand, if the “million man march” leads to violence.

Federico Ferrara of the National University of Singapore, the author of the newly published “Thailand Unhinged,” told The Irrawaddy: "It strikes me that whether or not Abhisit can just 'wait it out' depends on how the Redshirts plan to get to Bangkok as well as what they plan to do once they get there. If they converge on Bangkok in an orderly fashion, proceed to their 4 to6 rally sites, and then meet on Ratchadamnoen Avenue for a large but peaceful demonstration that takes place in a relatively small, confined area, the government can wait it out as long as it wants.”

The Thai government is mulling the introduction of emergency powers, but says it will not do so unless the demonstrations turn violent. The UDD takes the threat as an attempt to disband the march, saying that the emergency laws prevent gatherings of more than five people.

On Sunday, UDD leaders said that the government is considering asking the courts to revoke the bail for some of its leadership, which would leave them vulnerable to arrest, which presumably the army would be empowered to enforce, under emergency powers.

However, Paree, a press officer with the Redshirts and deputy chief of Thai Red News, said on Sunday that he thinks the government’s apparent slowness to react to the Redshirt gathering indicates “indecisiveness and disagreement” in the Cabinet, and possibly also in the army, or between the government and army.

Paree said that the police are “on our side,” citing the relaxation of stop-and-search procedures deployed on Redshirt convoys coming into Bangkok since Friday. Later that evening, Thaksin Shinawatra personally thanked the police when addressing the Redshirts by videolink.