After five months of occupying a strip of the street in front of the Interior Ministry and making the compound off limits to its officials, a group of protesters under the Labour Solidarity Committee and State Enterprises Workers Relations Confederation left last weekend for Lumpini Park, the anti-government protest stronghold.
Vicha: Investigated rice scandal
The Interior Ministry became a “no-go” zone, especially for caretaker Interior Minister Charupong Ruangsuwan, not long after the People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) kicked off its campaign to lay siege to government establishments.
The Labour Solidarity Committee and State Enterprises Workers' Relations Confederation, a PDRC ally headed by Somsak Kosaisuk, took over the strategic area in front of the ministry from the Network of Students and People for Reform of Thailand, also aligned to the PDRC.
The Centre for Administration of Peace and Order (Capo), tasked by the government with enforcing the security law and curtailing any civil unrest, and Mr Charupong both made pleas and threats over the months to get the group to disperse.
Last Saturday, hundreds of crowd control police were deployed near the ministry compound to apply pressure. Thousands of tambon chiefs and village heads were also mobilised. But the protesters initially refused to budge.
Unexpectedly, though, the protesters abruptly left on Saturday night. Many protesters did not even have time to pack their belongings.
A source at the PDRC said the decision to abandon the venue was made at a meeting attended by PDRC secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban and protest leaders after a copy of a letter instructing kamnans and phu yais to go to the capital had been circulated to local administration offices.
Mr Suthep, who had just finished his walk to solicit support from residents in the Ramkhamhaeng area to join the final battle, surprised his followers when he changed the route to the Interior Ministry instead of making a beeline back to Lumpini Park. When he met leaders of the ministry protest site, he held a closed-door meeting with them to discuss possible scenarios if there was a confrontation between the protesters and the local leaders.
Some protest leaders did not want to give up a venue they considered to be a symbol of government administration.
Mr Suthep reportedly urged them to think about the bigger picture of the protest. He did not want any confrontation, which could potentially turn violent, to spoil the PDRC’s “final battle” rally on Friday. The mass rally was initially scheduled for May 14.
Moreover, the PDRC held yet another mass gathering on May 5 to celebrate His Majesty the King’s coronation and take an oath of allegiance.
A violent standoff, according to Mr Suthep, would spoil the plan for a major rally, if not derail it.
It was not easy for the protest leaders to let go of the ministry protest site but they did eventually. The ministry was handed over to the police and the army when the protesters left last Saturday night before regrouping at Lumpini Park.
The next day when the tambon chiefs and village heads arrived, they found barbed wire, makeshift tents, walls of sandbags, and police and soldiers standing guard. They gathered briefly to hear Mr Charupong’s speech, sang in honour of His Majesty and went home.
The scene reminded some political observers of the “Valentine’s Day” operation by Capo to reclaim the protest site at Makkhawan Bridge. The protest groups abandoned the campsites in the area and allowed officers to move in with almost no resistance, only to return afterwards to retake their base.
The irony, according to the source, was that some of the kamnans and village heads whose mission was to pressure the protesters to ditch the ministry protest site did not return to their provinces straight away. Instead, they stayed around and joined Mr Suthep’s activities at Sanam Luang last Monday.
Vacuuming of power
The government's opponents celebrated wildly when the Constitutional Court on Wednesday stripped Yingluck Shinawatra of the prime minister's post and removed nine of her cabinet ministers over the Thawil Pliensri transfer case. But it appears the court ruling has not ended the political impasse.
Even as the caretaker government became "a decapitated body" when the head of the caretaker government, Ms Yingluck, was pushed out, the surviving 25 caretaker ministers were counting themselves lucky that they survived — at least for the time being.
Yingluck: Ordeal is far from over
Previously, the Pheu Thai Party and the Centre for the Administration of Peace and Order (Capo) issued veiled threats that a charter court ruling that went beyond the scope of the constitution could spark unrest.
The "beyond the scope of the constitution" remark was made to deter the Constitutional Court from issuing a ruling in a way that could leave the country with a power vacuum which might subsequently require the installation of an unelected government.
Capo director Chalerm Yubamrung, who is among the nine cabinet ministers to lose their jobs as a result of the court ruling, previously told the Bangkok Post that all hell would break loose if the court ruled to kick out the entire cabinet.
If that was the case, he warned the court judges and their family members to take good care of themselves as they could expect to feel the full force of the fury of not only the red shirts but people nationwide who would deem such a ruling as unjust.
He insisted he was not threatening the court, but merely making a warning.
Ms Yingluck chaired the cabinet meeting on Sept 2, 2011 which approved the transfer of Mr Thawil as National Security Council chief to the post of an adviser to the prime minister. As a result, the court ruled that the cabinet members who took part in the meeting also had to take responsibility and vacate their posts in the caretaker cabinet.
The charter court ruled by a unanimous vote of 9-0 to disqualify Ms Yingluck as prime minister and remove the nine cabinet ministers from office.
It was rumoured ahead of the ruling that the charter court judges would vote 6-3 to disqualify the entire cabinet, which would have created a vacuum of political power to pave the way for an interim neutral government to be installed under Section 7 of the constitution.
But as it happened, the court did not opt for a political power vacuum, and came up with the unanimous decision on the case, which coincided with the outcome of the ruling which Mr Chalerm had predicted.
The anti-government People’s Democratic Reform Committee has been most frustrated by the court's ruling as it still does not help the protest group to achieve its goal of creating a power vacuum as a result of the entire caretaker cabinet being kicked out.
In the wake of the court ruling, the house of a Constitutional Court judge and Chulabhorn Hospital located in the grounds of the Chulabhorn Research Institute on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road, and the Siam Commercial Bank headquarters near Ratchayothin intersection, were hit in M79 grenade attacks.
Gone, but not forgotten
This week has unarguably been the most tumultuous time in Yingluck Shinawatra’s all-too brief career in politics.
It has seen the country's first woman prime minister bid farewell to the cabinet she has headed for almost three years after being on the receiving end of an unpleasant Constitutional Court judgement in the Thawil Pliensri transfer case, only then to face the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s (NACC) recommendation for her retroactive impeachment in the Senate over the rice-pledging scandal the very next day.
The NACC has reason to believe that, after vetting stacks of documentary evidence and quizzing witnesses, Ms Yingluck showed herself not to have governed the country in compliance with the policies she declared to parliament, specifically in fighting graft.
Chalerm: ‘All hell will break loose’
She was accused of looking the other way at alleged corruption in the rice-pledging scheme that critics said had siphoned off more than 300 billion baht.
The double whammy for Ms Yingluck, however, is far from over as the NACC has yet to decide whether to indict her in the Supreme Court on criminal charges for dereliction of duty as prime minister in the rice scheme.
The assault on Ms Yingluck, according to her supporters, is two-pronged: The impeachment in the Senate and, possibly, an indictment in the Supreme Court. If impeached, she will be banned from politics for five years while a guilty ruling from the court would spell jail for her.
A jail term would be the most dreaded case of deja vu for Ms Yingluck, whose brother, ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was dealt a two-year prison sentence by the Supreme Court over the Ratchadaphisek land deal case involving his former wife, Khunying Potjaman na Pombejra, several years ago.
Ms Yingluck’s political rival, the Democrat Party, expects the indictment could come as early as next week.
However, the case against Ms Yingluck has split the NACC over technicalities.
A source in the NACC said some senior officials in the commission do not agree with deliberating the impeachment and the criminal aspects of the case separately as announced by commissioner Vicha Mahakhun.
Mr Vicha gathered facts and led the investigation into the complex maze of the rice scandal. He made it clear on many occasions that the NACC had no business rushing the probe as a prime minister was implicated and that no details were too small when it came to examining evidence.
The senior officials contended the two aspects should be combined because they both rely on the same set of facts from the investigation.
The source said the investigation has been wrapped up, with the last witness, former finance minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong having testified on April 18.
The impeachment bid will be put to the Senate and it is speculated it will take at least 45 days before the Upper House reaches a decision.
The impeachment will require the votes of at least 90 of the 150 senators. The task of mustering such support in a Senate that is split almost equally between critics and sympathisers of the government will not be easy.