Thailand’s redshirts prepare for another poll victory

Rural poor hope for the return of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra after election Suk Somboon village turned red in the early hours of Thursday morning, when its 200 residents gathered and chanting monks made offerings. They tied scarlet thread around neighbours’ wrists, put up flags along the roadside and erected a metal sign declaring their new status. “It’s a red district anyway. The point is the symbolism,” said Kwanchai Praipana, a prominent redshirt leader from Thailand’s Udon Thani province. “The aim is to show we want justice, democracy and Thaksin [Shinawatra] to return.” Hundreds of north-eastern settlements have proclaimed themselves “red democracy villages” since today’s general election was announced, in the latest evolution of the anti-government redshirt movement. It highlights a bitter division that claimed more than 90 lives last year and is focused on one man: the former prime minister, whose beaming face adorns Suk Somboon’s new sign. Thaksin Shinawatra – who was the owner of Manchester City FC for 15 months from June 2007 – defines Thai politics even from 3,000 miles away in Dubai, where he lives to avoid a jail sentence for abuse of power. The redshirt-associated party Puea Thai – led by his sister Yingluck, but Thaksin’s in all but name – is on course to beat the incumbent Democrats. Jon Ungpakhorn, an activist and former senator, warned last week : “There is a clear danger of violence on a scale closer to civil war if either side is provoked by extreme measures – for example, if a Puea Thai election victory were to be derailed by a legal judgment or military coup, or if a Puea Thai government were to swiftly facilitate the return of a defiant Thaksin Shinawatra by means of amnesty and pardon.” Prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, arriving for his party’s final, rain-drenched rally on Friday, said: “The core issue is whether the Thai people want to move the country forward beyond the conflict created by and surrounding one man.” But Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, suggested that the underlying issue was the awakening of a marginalised grassroots electorate that is challenging the political status quo. Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon who recently told Der Spiegel he had “barely a billion” left , might not seem an

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