Word: thais
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Irish tourist Dermuid McAnoy, expressing almost as much frustration toward the protesters as toward airline staff, who seemed to melt away as soon as the crowds armed with bamboo sticks and iron bars appeared. "Yes, we can leave, but we have no place to go."(See pictures from the Thai protests...
...yellow-clad demonstrators call themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). But they represent neither the majority of Thai people nor universal democratic values. Their mission is to erase from government any influence of billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as Prime Minister in a 2006 army coup. Although the telecom tycoon is beloved by many poor Thais who once gave him a record electoral mandate, the urban middle class, which forms the bedrock of the PAD, accuses Thaksin of being a power-hungry strongman. In October, the former P.M. was sentenced in absentia to two years' imprisonment...
...government literally on the run is clearly not an effective one. Parts of the Thai capital have been convulsed by gunfire and small-scale explosives. Over the past couple of months, several people, mostly PAD footsoldiers, have been killed in political street violence...
...clear what Thaksin wants to do with this "group of rising stars." But he and his supporters will need a deep bench if they are to continue dominating Thai politics. In the coming weeks, the lead party in Thailand's ruling coalition could be dissolved by the Constitutional Court because of an electoral-fraud conviction. If that happens, Somchai and other top party executives will be barred from politics, just as Thaksin and his top cohorts were legally excluded from office last year. Lower-echelon Thaksin stalwarts would have to reconstitute themselves as a proxy party. Still, support from rural...
...Bangkok's old airport, where a VIP lounge now serves as the makeshift headquarters of current Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat. A brother-in-law of Thaksin, Somchai was evicted from his real office by the protesters, who have besieged Government House for the past three months. (See pictures of Thai people boxing their way out of poverty and prison...