As the ASEAN summit approaches, Thailand’s red-shirts are demonstrating in great numbers. Interesting news now is that they have expanded their expressions of rage to include the king’s top advisor – which is interesting because it cuts quite close to the taboo on criticising the king himself. It suggests that the fact that the king is an enemy of the people is slowly eroding the respect for him that blights Thai politics.
I will be watching events in Thailand with interest – though I am fairly confident, depressingly, that even victory will bring the red-shirts about as much good as it brought Ukraine’s “Orange Revolutionaries”, i.e. a popular politician is finally returned to power, sets about bickering, embezzling, and betraying the hopes placed in him.
But it’s still necessary to support such vast masses of people struggling like this. The kind of stronger consciousness that could dispense with kings and politicians needs to be built by experience. I hope the Thai protesters have a better time of it than the British did.
