Lets face it, there’s not much love in Thailand for Prime Minister Samak or his government at the moment. All the innuendo and political debate aside the new government is in a very precarious position. The government while wanting to show that it is willing to hear the peoples concerns has also shown it’s weakness in doing so.
It’s one thing to let the peoples voices be heard but to let the people take over government buildings and the government run television station without drawing a clear line to the protesters has just given them more reason to step up their efforts. Last week in his speech to the nation Samak clearly stated the protesters would be removed from these buildings soon and clearly nothing to date has happened.
I fully understand that the new government doesn’t want there to be violence in these dealings but to let them continue will surely give The Peoples Alliance for Democracy ( PAD ) protesters more reason to step up their efforts and seeing this The Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship ( DAAD ) will become more vocal as well. The longer this goes on the chances that the violence between these two groups will escalate again is a given.
Samak has said yet again he will not step down as Prime Minister, his reasoning being the defense of democracy and the Monarchy. Other people are now making statements as well and they sound very much like another coup could be in the cards for Thailand. General Somjet, who is a close aid to former secretary general of the Council for National Security Winai Phattiyakul, said:
If the problems cannot be resolved by democratic means and the country is caught in a deadlock, a coup may be necessary
Samak is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly session in New York later this month. With ongoing protests and the fact that the last coup overthrew the government while previous Prime Minister Thaksin was attending the same United Nations meeting I think this trip may not happen. Samak doesn’t believe the same fate will befall him when he Goes to speak at the UN. He went as far as to make this statement:
The military knows the international community will not tolerate [another] coup
The international community has seen so many Thailand coup’s that it readily expects another coup every few years just due to the sheer volume and and history of Thailand coups. There have been 18 coups since World War 2.
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