I Love Thailand

Does anyone else think that a Thailand Coup is in the near future?

The situation in Thailand seems to be getting worse by the day. In the evening news, they showed footage of the chaos at the ASTV news agency – including footage of the news anchor getting injured while taping live.

With the PMs firing of the chief of police, I think the chances of another coup is great – even if their last one was very recent.

The situation is so different to 2006 that a peaceful coup would be very difficult – I don’t think that those to whom much of the army have strong feeling will want an unpopular coup government.

By being indentified with taking over the BKK airports Sondhi Limthongkul may well have committed political suicide. In order that he doesn’t take PAD down with him I suspect that someone else will now be promoted by those with influence behind the scenes as the rational voice of PAD; maybe we will see Chamlong Srimaung in a more high profile position and Sondhi being sidelined.

I enjoyed Arrraagghhhhh!’s comment. If what he said was done that would suit someone very nicely and undo years of work by someone else; which is exactly why I can’t see it happening.

The situation is virtually a Mexican stand-off. The main difference is that whilst one group has deployed their mob the other has not done so yet. I suspect that there will be talks and PAD will say something like ‘In order to pay respect to His Majesty King on his birthday and so as not to cause him to worry about the country we will request our supporters to abandon their protest at the airports in Bangkok.’ The reality is that they have little choice as moving against the airports was a strategic mistake because (i) it involved people outside the Thai political class in the game – international business that buys products from Thailand (cf. the US’s comment yesterday); (ii) it adversely effected the economy causing the Thai political class to lose money – never a wise move.