Thais want social inequalities addressed

May 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

BANGKOK, Thailand

As the Thai army retook Bangkok’s premier shopping district Wednesday from thousands of anti-government demonstrators in a bloody offensive, many citizens and analysts looked for the government to win a broader battle against Thailand’s corruption, poverty and social inequities.

The government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva should call for national elections, create policies that directly benefit the underprivileged and avoid overly harsh punishment for the leaders of the so-called Red Shirt movement, they said.

The army declared success after a nine-hour offensive that saw armored personnel carriers flatten bamboo barricades and reclaim a glitzy district occupied for weeks by anti-government demonstrators.

But even as the government broke a two-month standoff and some protest leaders surrendered, rioters detonated grenades and set fire to more than a dozen buildings, including banks, a luxury shopping mall, the stock exchange and a cinema complex, sending smoke billowing across the city. At least six people died during the offensive, and at least 69 were injured.

Hundreds of miles away, protesters attacked municipal buildings in the northern cities of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai.

The government imposed a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. in Bangkok and more than 20 of Thailand’s 75 provinces, as shopkeepers hastened to close early and tourists with early-morning flights scrambled for rooms at airport hotels.

Few people underestimated the challenges still facing Thailand.

“The army crackdown is only a short-term solution,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a research fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. “Without reform, the Red Shirts might go away, but they’ll return in other forms, perhaps underground.”

Making major structural changes will be difficult, particularly given that the Red Shirts and the government, supported by its socially conservative “Yellow Shirt” allies, have entrenched hard-liners who will continue to resist political compromise.

“Thailand doesn’t need a Red revolution or a Yellow revolution but an orange revolution that recognizes the needs of both sides,” said Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the New York-based Asia Society. “Thailand needs both democracy and stronger institutions.”

Red Shirt protesters, mostly from poor, farmer and working-class communities, have occupied parts of Bangkok since March, demanding Abhisit’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament and elections to replace a government they believe is illegitimate.

They say the current administration came to power by manipulating the courts and currying favor with the powerful military, which in 2006 ousted then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whom the Red Shirts support.

But the effectiveness of their message has been undermined, some said, by the grenades, bombs and guns that more-militant members have wielded.