Have been busy with some other things and will likely remain fairly busy for the next week. Still trying to catch up on the news so some links first and then some quick commentary.

  • Tumblerblog on the implications of the road map and on Giles’ commentary on the red shirt protests – agree almost completely with Tumbler’s comments on both.
  • Saksith has a post on the latest Red demands and the status of the road map (well it seems the latest as of mid yesterday). Absolutely Bangkok has some commentary on Abhisit’s response to the Red’s latest demands (basically Abhisit has set a deadline of today for the Reds to leave).
  • Khi Kwai in an excellent post entitled “The End of the Beginning”. Key excerpt:
    Earlier promises to the contrary notwithstanding, this was nothing close to a “final battle.” Nonetheless, Thailand seems to have reached a point of no return — perhaps more fittingly, the “end of the beginning” of what is still going to be a difficult transition. The road ahead remains long and uphill; along the way, it will no doubt be marked by victories as well as demoralizing setbacks and unsavory compromises.

Finally, some quotes. VOA:

Government spokesman Panitan Wattayanagorn says the protesters should realize there is there is public support for reconciliation.

“The ending of the protest is the wish of the Thai people – the majority of the Thai people – and I think the majority of the public is waiting and wanting the red shirts to end their demonstration and begin working on the objectives – the five objectives in the reconciliation proposal,” he said

The Age:

But there are concerns no long-term political peace will be achieved, even with an election, which the red shirt-aligned Puea Thai party would likely win.

”The election campaign … could be very nasty,” said Chulalongkorn University political science professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak. ”It could actually exacerbate the confrontation. It could end up in the same vicious cycle: whoever wins, the losers won’t accept it.”

Reuters:

The anti-government “red shirts” accepted on Monday a timetable for a November 14 election proposed by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva but also set a new condition: Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban must face prosecution over a clash with troops in April that killed 25 people.

Abhisit rejected the conditions and said the protesters should leave by Wednesday, warning that his government had the right to “take necessary action” if they refused to leave.

“If the protesters want to enter a reconciliation process, they can’t make conditions, they have to end their protest,” Abhisit told reporters.

“If they insist on these small points, it won’t be over, either they accept it or they don’t. The people have seen enough trouble already.”

Suthep, chief of security during the protests, went to the Department of Special Investigation on Tuesday to hear complaints filed against him by relatives of some of those killed, but the protesters said he must face formal criminal charges before they would agree to leave the city’s main shopping district.
…
“They are trying to force the police to formally charge government officials,” said Tanet Charoengmuang, a political scientist at Chiang Mai University. “Essentially, they refuse to go down alone and take all the blame.”

Greg Lowe in WPR:

Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst with Jane’s Intelligence Review, says that while the political situation in Thailand remains highly fluid, the government’s proposed roadmap is likely to move forward. Both sides are exhausted and looking for a way to walk back the current impasse without too great a loss of face with their own constituencies.

“My sense is that in the coming days . . . , [the roadmap] will move forward and [the Red Shirts] will wrap up the demonstrations. I’d be surprised if at this stage the efforts by some extremists to derail the process with continued violence succeed,” he says.
…
“I do think the Red Shirts will continue to expand and improve their ‘military option,’ their armed elements,” he says. “Speculation over a descent into civil war is grossly exaggerated, but I do believe they have the capacity for a potentially serious campaign of sabotage across large swathes of the Central Plains, and the North and Northeast.”

BP: Although, as Greg quotes from another analyst in the article this is the optimistic view. Essentially what Anthony says is right, the situation is “highly fluid”.

Simon Montlake in CSM:

But in Thailand’s hardscrabble northeast, there is little sign of surrender. A convoy of hundreds of pickup trucks was due to leave here Friday, part of a fresh influx from the rural heartland, even as leaders in Bangkok appear to be plotting their exit. The mobilization may reflect divisions in the leadership over how far to push for further concessions.

Ittichai Sriwongchai, a red-shirt organizer and local politician, says a decision was taken Wednesday to ratchet up the pressure.

“We need a knockout punch [to Abhisit],” he says. “We’ve had an upper cut, a hook. But people are saying, ‘Why don’t you go for a knockout?’

Finally, this excellent NYT piece on the lastest:

In a dispute that seemed arcane given the breadth of divisions in Thailand today, protest leaders demanded that the country’s deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, report to the country’s Crime Suppression Division to submit himself for questioning over his role in the crackdown. Instead, Mr. Suthep appeared at another law enforcement agency, the Department of Special Investigation, a move that protest leaders rejected because they claimed the agency has a bias toward the government.

The dispute highlights the government’s difficulty in reaching agreement with an increasingly factionalized, skeptical and embittered protest movement. Many of the protest leaders have political ambitions and appear eager to leave Bangkok only with an unambiguous victory after two months of around-the-clock demonstrations in Bangkok.

Protest leaders are under pressure from the radical wing of their movement to continue the demonstration, which has shut down a main commercial district in Bangkok.

BP: The protests will end, no they won’t; we have agreement, no we don’t. In BP’s view the red shirt leaders have had a bad few weeks. First, they were oblivious to what was happening at Chulalongkorn Hospital and can only apologize after the fact. Second, it seems reasonable they would need to take some time after Abhisit’s road-map offer and Abhisit even gave them initially until May 15, but they have made no clear response. They want this and then they want that. They hold a press conference and we seem closer to an agreement, but then far away again.They should have just said after Abhisit announced his road map that they need a week before giving a definitive answer after consulting “stakeholders” and then give an answer and stuck to it. Instead, we have one leader say this, another that, and well it’s simply all a mess. Then, we have the Seh Daeng sideshow – although all the supposed second generation leaders have denied it (if the government sees Seh Daeng as such a threat, why not arrest him then?)

To not end the protests because Suthep does not surrender himself to the right government agency, later that he has not been charged is silly. Both Abhisit and the red shirts agree on an independent investigation on what happened on April 10 so don’t see how they can justify Suthep being charged now. If the police submitted some faux charge against Suthep just to comply, it doesn’t mean Suthep would be prosecuted either so it seems rather pointless.

The problem is that the double standards argument doesn’t apply until the leaders are actually arrested. Then they can can complain that the PAD leaders still have not been charged with some serious offences over the airport seizure. Matichon reports that the investigative head has resubmitted the charge sheet against the PAD leaders to the Police Chief over the airport seizure after the Police Chief initially rejected it, but a decision is still being waited upon almost 18 months after the seizure. It is a simple argument for UDD to make if they are charged first, for the same offences for what has transpired over the past month, yet the PAD are not charged. However, again the double standards argument doesn’t start to apply until the leaders are arrested which seemingly won’t happen until post-rally.

Finally, to those who think that a crackdown would go smoothly, you must be kidding yourselves. If the red leaders are simply killed by the military as some suggest as a solution, things could get very violent, very quickly. Hence, why a negotiated settlement is still more likely than not. The red leaders though have worked themselves into a corner.