Thailand: Thaksin Regime Turns on its Own Supporters

In an emotional address to protesters, Mr Chatree said both local red-shirts and community leaders tried to pressure him to end the protest, on orders from high-level officials.

Several tearful farmers shouted angrily that they had no money to buy food or to send their children to school because the government has failed to pay them for rice sold under its subsidy scheme. They said the situation had also forced them to borrow money from loan sharks.

 Thailand’s English paper “The Nation” would also report in their article, “Unpaid rice farmers allege intimidation as protest ends,” that:

A protest by farmers that lasted for days at the Indochina intersection in Phitsanulok has ended in tears. After claiming they had been pressured by intimidation, the farmers dispersed Tuesday evening and had no idea when long-overdue payments from the government’s rice-pledging scheme would arrive.

“We don’t know what to do next,” Siraprapha Kukhong, 49, one of the protest leaders, said yesterday.

Another protest leader, Chatree Ampoon, could not be reached for comment following reports that red shirts and officials had intimidated his wife over his participation in the protest. “She called him about the threats she faced. He was overwhelmed and cried. Many of us cried with him,” Siraprapha said.

Thaksin Shinawatra and his “red shirt” enforcers turning on the very people who put them back into power is being described by some as a “new low,” however it was hardly unexpected. The myth of “rural support,” and “majority” the regime and its Western backers peddle is easily dispelled by both the regime’s performance in 2011′s general election, and surveys carried out by the regime’s own Western backers.

It was in 2010 that the Asia Foundation conducted its ”national public perception surveys of the Thai electorate,” (2010′s full .pdf here). In a summary report  titled, “Survey Findings Challenge Notion of a Divided Thailand.” It summarized the popular misconception of a “divided” Thailand by stating:

“Since Thailand’s color politics began pitting the People’s Alliance for Democracy’s (PAD) “Yellow-Shirt” movement against the National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship’s (UDD) “Red-Shirt” movement, political watchers have insisted that the Thai people are bitterly divided in their loyalties to rival political factions.”

The survey, conducted over the course of late 2010 and involving 1,500 individuals, revealed however, a meager 7% of Thailand’s population identified themselves as being “red” Thaksin supporters, with another 7% identifying themselves only as “leaning toward red.”

 Image: (left) 2011′s election results showing most, but not all northern provinces under Thaksin Shinawatra’s proxy regime in red. (right) Provinces where rice farmers are now blocking roads in protest to Thaksin’s vote-buying rice scam that has collapsed in bankruptcy and scandal – dousing the absurd “secession” theory floated by the Economist and others.