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Protesters at one of several major roads that they had blocked in Bangkok on Sunday. Ed Wray/Getty Images

Antigovernment Protesters Try to Shut Down Bangkok

International New York Times | 12 Jan. 2014

BANGKOK — Antigovernment protesters seeking to block next month’s elections in Thailand seized control of major roads in Bangkok on Monday as they began their campaign to shut down the city.

In this vast metropolis of well over 10 million people, the protesters could not paralyze all movement and commerce. But by Monday morning they had closed busy intersections, vowed to make major government offices inaccessible and laid plans to besiege the homes of top officials in the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose party is most likely to win the general elections that are scheduled for Feb. 2.

“We have to shut down Bangkok,” said Ratchanee Saengarun, a protester who stood in the middle of an intersection in the city. “This is our last resort.”

Protesters blocked several roads using double-decker buses, pickup trucks and sandbags. Bangkok’s traffic police officers, absent from the streets of central Bangkok early on Monday, were replaced by protesters who directed and diverted traffic with impunity.

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The government has called up 8,000 military personnel to guard against chaos. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

One of the officials singled out by the protesters, Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, told foreign reporters on Friday that he had already moved out of his house, a precaution emblematic of the government’s defensive posture during two months of aggressive street demonstrations. “I’ve already packed my stuff,” he said.

In addition to mobilizing thousands of riot police officers for what is widely called the “shutdown,” the government has called up 8,000 military personnel to guard against chaos.

“We are pretty sure that both the military personnel and the police can maintain law and order and peace next week,” said Phongthep Thepkanjana, a deputy prime minister.

Even in a city inured to protest in recent years, the attempt to block major sections of Bangkok was ambitious and fiercely controversial. Government supporters in the north and northeast lashed out at the protest and mobilized over the weekend to counter any takeover by the military, which has been ambivalent in its support for the government. Business groups and tourist associations pleaded with the protesters to back off. And some of the country’s leading scholars, who said Thailand was teetering on the edge of widespread violence, urged the protesters to allow the elections to proceed.

But the protest movement, a highly motivated, emotional and idealistic group largely led by the middle and upper classes in Bangkok and residents of southern Thailand, appeared to enjoy considerable support. Among those casting their lot with the protesters were the union representing Thai Airways, the national carrier; an association of rural doctors; the union representing employees of state-owned companies; and an association of university rectors.

Other institutions were as divided as the country itself. Many professors and students at one of Thailand’s most prestigious universities, Chulalongkorn, vowed to support the protest by blocking a central commercial district. But others at the university said they were outraged that the protest sympathizers would claim to represent Chulalongkorn.

The protesters are driven by hatred of Ms. Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire tycoon and former prime minister who is in self-exile overseas but wields great influence over the government. The protesters are passionately opposed to the family’s dominance in the country and believe that the elections will cement its hold on the political system. Disillusioned with electoral democracy, they want to replace Parliament with a “people’s council.”

Yet Mr. Thaksin, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006, and Ms. Yingluck are admired by voters in the north and northeast for their transformative policies, including universal health care.

The leader of the protests, Suthep Thaugsuban, was quoted as saying on Sunday in the English-language newspaper The Nation that he would chase Ms. Yingluck out of Thailand. “You will no longer have a place to live,” Mr. Suthep said. “We’ll fight until the victory belongs to the people.”

Seeming to acknowledge the fears of his critics that the protests could kindle violence, he added that he would retreat if there were signs of a civil war.

“If someone instigates a civil war, I will tell the people to go home,” Mr. Suthep said.

In a country with a long history of military interventions in politics, the head of the army, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, has given various Delphic answers to reporters when asked about the possibility of a military coup.

Last week, the retired general who led the coup in 2006, Sonthi Boonyaratglin, said military intervention was “impossible” because the country was so deeply divided that a “mass” of people, joined by dissident military groups, would rise to oppose it.

Mr. Sonthi said he was often asked by officers about the likelihood of a coup. “If you love the country and the king, you better stop thinking about it,” he said he had told the officers. 

“I can assure you that they won’t do it,” he said.