By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Apr 13 2009 (IPS)

Water fights and neon-coloured water guns are a standard feature on Bangkok’s streets at this time of the year. They are part of the revelry as Thais douse each other during their New Year festival, Songkran.

Thai troops take to the streets outside the king's palace to protect it from protesters. Credit: Macan-Markar/IPS

The soldiers fired hundreds of rounds into the air and in the direction of the protesters to take back the streets in an area called Din Daeng. The red-shirt wearing protesters responded with Molotov cocktails and improvised petrol bombs.

This battle lasted for hours and left 74 people injured, some with gunshot wounds. The number of fatalities remains unclear – with the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) stating at one point that at least two of its red-shirted supporters died in the clash. The government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva denied such reports.

Monday morning’s scene at Din Daeng was just one of the many political fires that spread across Bangkok through the day, where the enraged ‘red shirts’ of the UDD captured important intersections and marked their turf by setting alight rubber tires and burning empty buses they had commandeered to fortify their territory.

The government’s effort to take back the streets and enforce emergency laws in Bangkok and five neighbouring provinces appeared to have provoked more anger among the ‘red shirts’. They gathered in the hundreds, chanting pro- democracy slogans, openly defying the emergency law, which bans gatherings of more than five people.

“If they crackdown on us it will spell the start of a people’s war,” says Jakrapob Penkair, a leader of the UDD. “This is not a civil war, a war among equals, with each bearing arms, not knowing who is going to win. This is a war of the have-nots.”

“There are more red-shirts around the country. Those who want to crackdown should know this,” he told journalists outside the prime minister’s office – known here as Government House – where thousands of UDD have taken over the streets since late March to hold round-the-clock political rallies aimed at attacking the country’s conservative political establishment.

“The red-shirt movement is fast becoming the biggest political movement in Thai history,” says Jaran Ditapichai, a former member of the national human rights commission and now a supporter of the UDD. “There are red-shirt protests in more than 30 provinces.”

“The people want a revolution,” he added during an interview. “This is the idea of the mass of the people.”

Monday’s confrontation between the ‘red shirts’ and the security forces comes two days after anti-government protesters stormed the venue of a summit of 16 nations in the resort town of Pattaya, forcing the host country – Thailand – to cancel this regional meeting of South-east Asian and East Asian leaders.

The anger that drives the ‘red-shirts’ is rooted in Thailand’s last military coup in September 2006. The military ousted from power Thaksin Shinawatra, who had led his political party to two convincing electoral triumphs in 2001 and 2005.

Thaksin, who is currently living in exile to avoid being arrested for breaking the conflict-of-interest law and a raft of corruption charges, has a strong following among the urban and rural poor who make up the backbone of the ‘red shirts’. Such loyalty stems from the many pro-poor policies he launched during the five-and-a-half years he was in office.

The political divide that has split Thailand since the 2006 coup, the country’s 18th putsch, pits the ‘red shirt’ constituency against this kingdom’s royalists, the military, the urban elites, conservative bureaucrats and Abhisit’s Democrat Party – which heads the current coalition government.

The Abhisit administration is viewed among the UDD ranks as a puppet of the country’s powerful military. It follows the backroom deals orchestrated by senior military figures – in addition to large amounts of money paid to parliamentarians – to help the Democrat Party come to power four months ago after an elected government loyal to Thaksin was disbanded by a controversial court ruling.

“In 1992 we had an outright military dictatorship, but now we have a hidden dictatorship,” says a 61-year-old from a rural northeastern province who identified himself as Surapan. “I am on the streets for democracy. We need elections.”

“Mr. Abhisit must resign and he must dissolve the parliament,” Suparan said in an interview. “These are our demands.”

“I want this government to get out, because it is a government not elected by the people,” added another ‘red shirt’ protester. “The army is behind the setting up of the current government. It is not a Thai government.”

Excerpt: