Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cies and creation of social divisions as justification for the coup. Thaksin quickly flew to
London, where he remained in exile until his UK visa was revoked in 2008.
In a nationwide referendum held on 19 August 2007, Thais approved a military-drafted
constitution. Under the new constitution, elections were finally held in late 2007. After
forming a loose coalition with several other parties, parliament chose veteran politician
and close Thaksin ally Samak Sundaravej as prime minister.
Not surprisingly, Samak was regarded as little more than a proxy of Thaksin by his op-
ponents, and shortly after taking office he became the target of a series of large-scale
protests held by the Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the same group of mostly
Bangkok-based middle-class royalists who had called for Thaksin's resignation in the lead
up to the 2006 coup. By this point, the PAD had already begun wearing their trademark
yellow to show their allegiance to the king.
In August 2008, several thousand yellow-shirted PAD protesters took over Government
House in Bangkok. The takeover was followed by sporadic violent clashes between the
PAD and the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), a loose association
of red-shirted Thaksin supporters who had set up camp nearby at Sanam Luang.
On 25 November, hundreds of armed PAD protesters stormed Bangkok's Suvarnab-
humi and Don Muang Airports, entering the passenger terminals and seizing control of the
control towers. Thousands of additional PAD sympathisers eventually flooded Suvarnab-
humi, leading to the cancellation of all flights and leaving as many as 230,000 domestic
and international passengers stranded. The stand-off lasted until 2 December, when the
Supreme Court wielded its power yet again in order to ban Samak's successor, Prime
Minister Somchai Wongsawat, from politics and ordered his political party and two coali-
tion parties dissolved.
In addition to financial loss, the events of 2008 also had a significant social cost in that
Thailand, a country that had mostly experienced a relatively high level of domestic stabil-
ity and harmony throughout its modern history, was now effectively polarised between the
predominately middle- and upper-class, urban-based PAD and the largely working-class,
rural UDD.
In December 2008 a tenuous new coalition was formed, led by Abhisit Vejjajiva, the
Oxford-educated leader of the Democrat Party. Despite Abhisit being young, photogenic,
articulate and allegedly untainted by corruption, his perceived association with the PAD
did little to placate the UDD, and in February 2010 the 'red shirts' and self- proclaimed
prodemocracy activists united to demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva stand
down.
